Halloween Girls ~ Mixed Media Canvas

These were so much fun to make. I had this idea in my head ever since I completed this LifeBook Lesson, and was inspired by Finnabair, who taught this particular lesson. As soon as Halloween stuff started showing up in the stores, I started collecting the found pieces. I had bought the dahlia flowers when the spring flowers went on sale at Michaels.

Here are some progress pictures and some of the process steps:

The idea started with a sketch doodle I did at work, but failed to take a picture of it. I transferred those sketches to a couple of 12"x24" canvases.

I then used modeling paste through a stencil to create the texture of the skulls. This stencil is a Dylusions Skull Stencil.

Then I started painting the faces with acrylic paint.

I first glued down some black twine, then painted the shape of the hair with black gesso. I then planned out and started gluing down the found pieces using a heavy gel medium.

After the glue dried I pained over all the found pieces with black gesso. I also added some of the black gesso to the flowers to grunge them up a bit.

I decided that the skull background might be a to much and added on some crackle texture paste. then painted the backgrounds with acrylic paint. I then took some metallic paint and brought out the skulls.

I used InkaGold metallic wax medium to go over the found objects to bring everything back out.

And then added some white rim highlights to make the silhouette pop a bit, and added some details and finishing touches to the faces.

Here are some close ups so you can see the details.