PYHaS Week Five - Go With the Flow

 Week Five of Paint Your Heart and Soul 2021 was a class with Katrina Koltes, who showed us how to start a painting with translucent layers of colour, then find the faces and figures which appear as shapes in the random drips, squiggles and random shapes you've created. Next step was to start building on those found forms with acrylic paints, adding details to the figures and the background to tell a story.

Katrina found two figures embracing, which became and mermaid rescuing a sailor, with a stormy sea and a shipwreck in the background. In my random squiggles, I found five mermaids and ended up with a much more peaceful scene. I think they're sisters, they're listening to the song of the sea, feeling tranquil and letting the current take them along with the fishes wherever it will go.

For my first layers I used acrylic inks in and analogous colour scheme of blues and greens. Then I went for acrylic paints, coloured pencils and pastels for the figures. Back to the inks for more translucent layers to add depth, then I mixed them with gesso to paint the leaves and seaweed. The fishes were cut from hand painted deli paper and applied with matte medium, along with some gilding flakes. A wash of blue and green watercolour paint here and there and then back in with metallic pencil and white paint pen to add details. Finally a touch of sparkle for their tails, using a shimmer brush pen.

Very mixed media and very fun - I went back to this over the course of four days before I decided it was done :o)