The Wonderful Word for This Wednesday is “Serendipity”
Hi friends!
We haven’t connected in awhile and that’s entirely my fault. We’ve made some big life changes in the last few months including a move to Kitsap County to be close to my family. The grownups are adjusting well to the new surroundings and the kids are coming along slowly with accepting the move. I’ve been keeping focused on getting the move completed and setting up house.
Serendipity
Amidst all of this I was still taking on-line art classes from a couple of my favorites and playing art whenever I got a few minutes. I was in the middle of a class called ‘Flower Flow’ by Laly Mille when my grandma, age 98 passed away.
One might call it serendipity that as I was painting flowers my grandma, who was a master gardener, passed away. While I’m so sad she is not on this earth with us anymore, I know she is up there gardening for God in Heaven with no pain, just pure joy.
As I painted on, my process began to morph into therapy for my grieving and grateful heart to have had my grandma in my life. Everything she touched bloomed! I mean flowers, but I also mean people. She was all love.
Somewhere along the way, an idea began to hatch in my mind. I was going to make a big canvas of florals based on my grandma’s garden as a bit of a memorial to her and a bit of therapy for me.
More Serendipidy
Digging through old shoe boxes as I purged for the move, I discovered all kinds of letters from my grandma. Each of them started with the words, ‘Beloved’, or ‘Dear One’. My heart melted as I read the words she had written to me over the years, AND her handwriting was beautiful! Amongst my shoe box findings, I also found pictures of her in her garden.
I threw all of my grandma goodies into a Tupperware container and got to work on a mixed media piece of Grandma love. I really wish I had taken a picture at this point, but no cigar.
Here is the process in case you want to steal some ideas:
*This is a mix of Laly Mille’s class and my own ideas.
- I ripped up the cards and letters and glued them all over the canvas in all directions, keeping important words and pieces on the top half of the painting as the bottom half will be mostly covered. (You can use the originals or print them out from scanned copies on your computer for thinner paper as card stock gets tricky to deal with in a mixed media piece). I used Golden’s Matte Gel Medium for the glue.
Pro Tip: Scan all of the cards into your computer so you have them in safe keeping forever before you rip them up and use them in your piece!
- Then I put a thin cover of light blue and aqua acrylic paint right over that first layer, ensuring you could still see the words (wiping off thicker paint with a cloth).
- Next, I made a rainbow gradation (dark to light) using a transparent medium like alcohol inks or acrylic inks from the bottom to a little past the middle.
- When these base layers were completely dry, I began cutting images of her gardens and from floral napkins, and from the beautiful cards she sent me and glued them all on in a collage from the bottom up just past the middle (covering the transparent rainbow colors).
- I then painted some simple little flowers amongst the collage flowers. Even just finger dots of paint will resemble flowers as the context is already there. Remember to use white!
- Then I added embellishments like delicate lacey flower stickers, wooden flowers etc. (stuff I had in my art supplies).
- One of my favorite things to do is add splatters so there are various colors of splatters all over.
- Now for the extra special part of this painting, I added some of grandma’s buttons throughout the garden as centers of flowers or even acting as flowers themselves. I happen to have an antique jar full of her buttons so this was a fun step!
- For the words, I transferred them on with chalk on the back of printer paper and then used a glue pen to go over the letters and apply gold leaf. I added a border of gold leaf on the top part as well.
- WARNING: You WILL have gold leaf imbedded into EVERYTHING if you use it, but it is oh so much fun!
Some Process pictures (I got so involved with the process, I forgot to take any pictures after these until it was completed)
Where’s Grandma?
Like a ‘Where’s Waldo’ illustration, you can find little grandma’s in this painting. Take a good close look at the finished piece and see all of the hidden treasures you can find! There’s special words and phrases in there, a cross (grandma had a very strong faith), and more!
In Conclusion
I have been wanted to allow more heart and soul into my work but struggling with how to do that. I really wish it didn’t take the passing of one of my favorite people in my life for this to happen, but it opened up a special creative process that was truly cathartic and therapeutic. Having her words written to me in her writing, along with her buttons, in my hands and then in the painting made it an extra special process. This is my absolute favorite painting (and biggest) that I’ve ever done and I truly love it. It has my heart and soul embedded in every layer.
I highly recommend this process!
If you have any questions or comments, I’d love to hear from you!
Kimberly Snider, Virtuoso, Signing Off
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