Sweet Pea Stamps: To the Moon and Back

Sunday, January 4, 2015

To the Moon and Back - Jane's view

Sweet Pea Stamps

Today is my day to showcase an image from Sweet Pea Stamps and I have chosen to work with the beautiful image To the Moon and Back by Courtney McAnsh which is available from the Sweet Pea Store.

The challenge this month on the Sweet Pea challenge blog, One Sweet Challenge is Art Inspiration Day. When I saw the theme of this challenge I fell in love hahahaha, interpreting this as using inspiration from artists who are close to my heart. I have three artists from the old schools which send tingles through me, Michelangelo (I am sure I was a concubine of his in a past life hehehehe), El-Greco, so different and for his time with his elongated images instead of realism and Van Gogh (not his dark realistic stuff but his more manic style of painting), I just love his mega amounts of movement in his artwork. So for my creation I decided to use the inspiration from Van Gogh and his Starry Night, one of my favourite paintings of all time and one where the image from Sweet Pea, To the Moon and Back by Courtney fitted perfectly.

To begin I printed my sentiment and the hands and then coloured the background using regular oil pastels so try and create the texture of the brush strokes.

Next I coloured the image with Promarkers and used gold pen to embellish it. A few gold stickles finished off the image and the surrounding area later on.

Now to deconstruct a wee book by removing the inner section. I then covered the book with my design.

Two coats of Gesso to protect the cover and make it hard wearing. It is the first time I have used this product and I just love the way it feels - awesome stuff.

While that was drying I coloured a small pencil with Promarkers and gold paint then added a small bead chain for a bit of interest. The pencil is attached to the book with a ribbon loop. Once the book was dry and the loop in place I then backed the paper insert with card and used this section to stick to the front and back covers thereby covering up my inside image folds at the same time as putting it all back together.