Darling Deer Mixed Media Woodland Painting Process

Yesterday I posted a new mixed media painting, Darling Deer. Inspired by Bambi, of course! Today I'm going to share with you the progress of how I created this piece :)

I started off by selecting four 6x6" pieces of patterned paper that I felt would represent sky and land well and laid them down. I really love the green piece on the bottom right, and was a little sad that in the end it gets quite covered up.

Next I added some torn paper with music notes pattern to break up the 50/50 split of the canvas between the sky and land, and applied some green-blue paint to begin to unify the background.

I then added washi tapes (love, love love that chevron tape I got months ago!) and stamped texture onto the canvas (I use a cute polka-dot pine tree, perfect for this woodland piece). Again, just trying to break up and "perfect-ness", and create a naturally random background. I try to stay away from perfectly symmetrical, but at the same time, try to keep things (colours in particular) balanced. 

While the last step was drying, I took a piece of paper to size out the area that I'm placing my deer, and sketched a deer onto it. Since I'm out of transfer paper, and I want to construct this deer from multiple patterned papers, I opted to sketch it outside of my sketchbooks so I can then cut it up and use the pieces as stencils. I ended up cutting it into 10 pieces, and used four different patterned papers.

I apply a few of my first elements onto my canvas: a library card (which I filled in / distressed myself) and tree trunk, and a banner on the top right.

I choose wording, and lay everything down together before attaching it to the canvas and committing to it. Since I am working with a somewhat-definite-plan (I know what I want in my head, but haven't really sketched out the particulars), I want to be able to move my elements around until I am satisfied with their locations. If I hadn't done that, I may have placed the deer too high, and not have had enough room for the quote, especially since it is such a tight fit to begin with. I attach everything down.

I add more elements, some stencilling, my blossoms and some more collaged elements. I do shading with the Faber-Castell big brush pens, and for more detailed shading I use these with a small paint brush and water to get the shading just right. Finish with a protective layer on everything except the blossoms (being coffee filters, they would "wilt" if coated with gel medium, ect). 

And there it is, "Darling Deer". A 12x12" whimsical woodland mixed media painting. I really like how "Sweet" and "Simple" are the two words that stand out the most (I almost named this Sweet and Simple). I am pleased with my shading on the head of the deer. I was really worried how it might turn out, and to be safe, applied a layer of gel medium and let it dry prior, so that I knew I could "erase" it off if needed. It also made shading with the FC big brush pens a lot easier (you can't really shade with them well on "absorbant" material, like uncoated paper). The colour scheme has a nice vintage feel to it, without loosing too much of its vibrancy.

The original is available for sale in my online store.