Art process: Explaining the progression of my “Journey” art piece.

This is a mixed media art piece. The final image is digital, but here you can see some of the progression. In the first image, you see an oil pastel drawing with one piece of fiber paper with stars to the left. I layered the oil pastels and then scratched into it to created this look. I played on that star image with the curvy lines coming from the points and made more of it in my scratches. That technique is called sgraffito when you scratch into the oil pastels. Some people use paint over top of the first layer of oil pastel, but I always use more oil pastels in contrasting colors.

Even though I sort of liked the first image (and did get a good scan) I continued working by adding more collage materials. I added tissue papers, fiber papers, and decorative papers. I like the look of layers, especially when you can see through one layer to the layer underneath. It adds mystery and intrigue in my opinion. I did blend in a few more oil pastels. I tried to soften and blend in a few of the hard edges so the piece would look a bit more unified. Then I applied a coat of clear gesso. Once dry, I used gel pens to draw in a few more details and alter some of the colors. This image was then scanned again, and I then altered it digitally. I added some shadows to the stars. I lightened the image to make it brighter by making 2 more duplicates of the image using a “screen” layer mode. I added my own hand written text in another layer and did layer blending options to give it shadows and glows. I found a dragonfly which I cut out digitally and pasted into the image. I made a few duplicates of that using “screen” and various layer modes until I got just the right level of transparency, brightness and contrast, then did the same kinds of blending options to create the shadows and glows. I also fooled around with the transparencies. I did the same thing with a treasure chest I found using the same process. I added a layer of fairy dust. Then I went to Coral Painter Essentials 6 to get some more fairy dust since it is no longer found on my Coral Painter 2019. I always also add image adjustments in auto colors, levels, and contrast to most all of my images unless to do so makes it look worse. I don’t think I changed the color on this except to make it brighter using the technique I mentioned. The auto color doesn’t always result in a improved version. I used the glow fx feature on Coral Painter 2019 to color and draw in the Christmas lights.

The final image is very whimsical which was the look I was going for.

Go here to see what God spoke to me about this painting.

I am experimenting with some gel skins of the digital elements (text, treasure chest, dragon fly, Christmas lights ) printed out to add to the original art piece to get it to look like the digital version.