mixed media – Brandi Made It!

The making of ‘Laurel’

I get compelled to make angel paintings from time to time. The most recent time was this past fall after meeting with a contact of mine in my advocacy work. She had purchased an angel from me for her mother. After we talked, I was inspired to paint another angel.

I started off by writing positive affirmations and statements with water-soluble pencils and then splashing on colors that give me joy – bright pink, mauve, purple, and, of course, gold. Those colors give me joy. I’d love to use fluorescent pink (which I have) but it is not a lightfast color – that means it will fade over time. The paint I use is all lightfast, so should last for decades without any fading.

I flip the painting around a few times to see what configuration I liked the best before carving out the angel shape.

As I looked at the colors, I decided to have her wings be made of flowers, leaves, and feathers. It was at this point that I decided her name – I wanted something floral inspired that was also something that wouldn’t be the most traditional name either.

To make the wings have more of a glow, I used antique silver gold-leafing. I like it to peek out from behind some of the feathers. I also used the gold-leafing in the flower centers too. I also needed to add details to her face. Acrylics dry so quickly that I didn’t think I could have the color blending that I would like so I used oil paints to define her face.

Lots more shading and highlights added and now, she’s done! I took her to a local photographer to have high-resolution photos made of her so I can have fine art prints made. Because of the size (30×40 inches) I struggle to get level and non-skewed photos, so better to hire a professional!

I will be offering 5×7 and 8×10 fine art prints and am very excited to share that I will be also offering, 11×14 inch limited edition hand-embellished with gold leaf fine art prints that are mounted on a cradled board and will be ready to hang on your wall! I’ll provide an update when I have the items listed on my website.

I am not feeling compelled for new angels currently, though I am very motivated for art-making, so stay tuned for birdies, flowers, and maybe some landscapes. We’ll see…

Another angel in the works…

I think I subconsciously tend to paint angels when I am dealing with a health issue. As many of my followers know, I am living with Stage IV inflammatory breast cancer. In the lead-up to my Angels of Power collection, people asked if I was painting chemo angels – because they were bald. I wasn’t intentionally, but it turns out that at that time the cancer was coming back.

I have only painted one angel since then, but she was gorgeous. The other week I attended a social event with a cancer group I am an advocate for and the subject of angel paintings came up. Immediately, I decided to paint another angel… maybe more than one. We’ll have to see about that.

The ironic thing is, now that I decided to create another angel… and I’ve actually already started on the underlayers… my own health and concern for cancer spread has come to the forefront. Are they related? I don’t know. I don’t necessarily think that’s how the world works, but I really don’t know.

Anyway… check out the beautiful underlayers! Can you see where the face is? I’ll post more as she progresses. Maybe I’ll even paint some small angels to spread the joy.

My next collection

My son and I love the movie, Encanto. He’s requested a painting of a capybara, one of the animals that came to Antonio’s room. This prompted me to make a collection of animals that are native to Colombia. I’ve been sourcing images of some of my favorite animals.

Almost all the canvases are prepared so it was time to prepare my paint palette. Sometimes when painting I do well using colors that I pick instinctively, in the moment. But, most of the time I create a more cohesive and successful painting when I develop my pallete ahead of time.

I learned about this general idea from a few artists that I follow but, Amanda Evanston shared the idea of finding images from advertising that speak to you and pull out the colors. So I rummaged through pages that I’ve turn out of magazines. I decided to use the colors from a blanket that was on a magazine page.

I spend 15-20 minutes mixing colors in my paint box to come up with the colors I wanted. I have written how to mix the colors on page in my watercolor sketchbook from Arteza. I’ll refer to this page over and over until I finish the painting. I may still pick one accent color to add for pizzazz but that remains to be seen.

Working on some art for me!

We have a soon-to-be blank spot on our wall and I decided to paint a beautiful heart painting for our home.

I painted over a painting that failed to inspire me and then added collage hearts. This morning I painted more hearts on it.

When the paint is dry I’ll be adding more hearts with acrylic ink markers and maybe even some soft pastel. I can’t wait to see it vintage and hanging on my wall!

I achieved my goal for the day!

As part of my creative outlet, I’ve decided to start creating stationary as a digital download. I am looking forward to creating small paintings to use as the design for multiple sets of stationery that people would download from Etsy and use as we try to revive snail mail – let’s rebrand it as happy mail 🙂

The first step I needed to achieve was how to create lined paper in Photoshop. After watching a video (about 20 times) and reading suggestions on the Adobe forum I have finally done it. I’ve made lined paper. (It doesn’t sound so impressive as I say it out loud, but this occupied about an hour of my day yesterday and about 20 min today. But, I persevered and finally figured it out.

My idea for creating the stationary is to have lined and unlined versions of it. It will come in 8.5 x 11 size and A4 size that can be printed for the full sheet or the end-user can print 2 pages per sheet. I will also create a template for a coordinating envelope that can be printed, cut out, and then glued/taped – then everything will coordinate.

What do you think? Do you think snail mail is dead or can we revive it with easy to obtain creative stationary?

Getting back into the swing of things…

I’ve just learned of the #100daysproject and think it’s just the thing for me to get back into blogging regularly.

My goal is to create a short blog post daily for 100 days related to art. There are no limits to the relevance to art. I may write about art I’m creating, art books I’m reading, ideas I have for future projects, etc.

I’m trying to start this project a little early, so this weekend I got back into my art space and painted some cute notebooks for a local shop. Rainbow and hearts – I’ll never stop loving that theme!

Custom Christmas ornaments

I was so pleased when a friend of mine, who has purchased several pieces of my art, asked me to create her custom Christmas ornaments to give to her family. I jumped at the chance… And then I sat and didn’t do anything.

I had originally wanted to gelli print them, because I love the look you get from transferring the shape of the actual item (in this case, holly.) But, I couldn’t find holly of a size that would fit the size of the wooden discs.

After a bunch of “hemming and hawing,” I decided to just paint the holly and add some berries. In a short couple of hours the ornaments were all done, complete with a custom message to her family on the back.

I’m pleased with how they turned out and she is too, which is what matters most.

Monoprint Love :)

I have been having such a good time making monoprints with branches, weeds, and flowers – I’ve done this before with my gelli plate, but recently I have been doing it with a sheet of aluminum foil. What have I done differently? I have been using chaos layers or a surface with paint of some sort on it and then doing the monoprint on that surface. After the paint dries, I go in with Posca pens (acrylic paint markers) or soft pastels and add line work. It’s so much fun!

I will be delivering my first round of monoprint art to a local shop to be for sale. The second round will be taken to the shop once my mat boards arrive. Fingers crossed that they sell! I’d love to start paying myself back for all the art supplies that I have been purchasing.

This is one of my favorite monoprints from this first round!

Painting Peonies

I am a member of the Amanda Evanston Insider’s Studio group on Facebook and one of the weekly lessons was on painting peonies in a loose, semi-abstract fashion. I have yet to complete those peonies in acrylics, but… I painted loose, semi-abstract peonies in soft pastels! I love it.

I shared this painting online and a friend of mine loved it, so I am sending it to her, but I am not done with peonies yet. I have plans to paint at least one more in soft pastels and I also will be painting a few in acrylics with soft pastel accents. Can you tell I love soft pastels?! They are just so luminous and I think they give so much dimension to the paintings.

For my acrylic attempts I am going to use a stretched canvas instead of watercolor paper. Here’s my starting point. I’m so excited to get started.

Stay tuned for updates – hopefully I’ll be able to complete something this week! {I have a lot of “in process” paintings happening right now}

Thank you for checking out my blog today 🙂