Misty Mawn Style Canvas

Sweetpea is running a Misty Mawn Style swap in CCSwaps. The instructions were:

"These works of art should be created on either canvas board or the stretched canvas. Size - no smaller than 4" x 6" - no larger than 8" x 10". The backgrounds should be hand painted . . . the images may be cut from magazines, paperback books, etc. Please adhere with a good strong bond! Gel medium works VERY well. Please use some stamping on this project . . . background stamps, flourishes, writing, etc."

As usual, I jumped in with both feet and signed up for this swap as I love a challenge!

So anyway, here is what I did to make the swap piece:

1. I had some canvas boards and decided to use one of the 5" X 7" ones. I coloured it with acrylics and stamped a large hero art background tree with gray Versafine ink. I then stamped some flourishes with gesso and fluid chalk inks. Also added some "writing' with a stamp and fluid chalk ink.



2. I used magazine pieces and some left over printables for the image of the woman.



3. Now I can't draw if my life depended on it, but I was determined to try something on this canvas, so I drew the tree, the bird, the sun and the woman's legs using white paint as the base, filled them in with acrylic paints, then outlined them with black acrylic paint.



4. I went over the body of the woman with a bit of gesso and some of the acrylic paint (watered down) then dabbed it off a bit. I did this, as it seemed to make the image blend into the background a bit more.

This is my first attempt:




I felt it still was not quite right so I added more stamping, this time in black and some more colour around the edges and in a few other places. I think I am happy with it now.


I had absolutely no clue as to how to do this type of swap, so I did the best I could with it and had a lot of fun. Now whether it is acceptable or not ... who knows? Any comments or critique would be appreciated.