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Jennifer, My Love - a mixed media collage painting tutorial

Jennifer, My Love
Cyndi Lavin, 2017

The western juniper is actually considered an invasive species in Oregon, which seems terribly sad to me since they are so interesting looking.  I spent some time taking pictures of them, along with other Northern California and Oregon trees.  I decided upon a juniper for this piece, not just because I love the gnarly way they look, but also because the song Jennifer Juniper kept running through my mind!

This is a pretty simple piece when you get down to it.  Draw a tree or something else that you love.  Chose the colors that remind you of the place.  Assemble!

1. I used a lightbox to trace my drawing onto dressmaker's pattern paper with medium and extra small Pitt pens.  Spray the tracing with an acrylic fixative.  

2. On a wet piece of heavy watercolor paper, use foam brushes to paint around the outer edges with Phthalo blue acrylic paint. All of the paints that I used were diluted with quite a bit of water in order to get some binder separation.  Texture the blue before it dries with a paper towel. Let it dry before proceeding.


 
3. I used the following colors, mostly mixed to get the subdued saturations:
Green gold, Sap green, Dioxazine purple, Titan buff, Yellow ochre, Red oxide, Quinacridone burnt orange, Burnt sienna.  Mix and dilute until you get what you want, and use a spray bottle to moisten the surface.  I used foam brushes to spread and blend them.  Let the colors dry and top them with Polymer medium.  Let it dry.  

4. Rip out the pattern paper tree.  Iron it in place, using parchment paper to protect your iron and board.  Do any final color adjustments.  Spray again with acrylic spray, and top the entire piece with Matte medium



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Copyright 2017 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. Not to be reprinted, resold, or redistributed for profit. The tutorial only may be printed out for personal use or distributed electronically provided that entire file, including this notice, remains intact.

Comments

Aimeslee Winans said…
Very nice, thank you for the tutorial. xoxo