Photo Challenge at ABAA

Rosie and I have decided to have monthly challenges from now on and this month Jaqi is our guest challenger. She has kindly allowed us to use one of her lovely old family photographs to inspire our artwork. I decided to transfer the image onto a 5"x 5" chunky canvas using gel medium. Unfortunaltely its now the wrong way round and (too late) I realise that I should have reversed it before printing it out!
I'd like to thank Ooglebloops for the lovely netting she sent me as part of a packet of treasures last week. It fitted perfectly with my colour scheme. The pansies are from a beautiful pack of tissues! (Torn and applied with gel medium......see Norah's blog if you want to see this technique done really well!)

I used upholstery tacks to attach the wire and the plastic netting .... and very pretty they are too!

The words Only a bird in a gilded cage are from a very old (rather sad) musical hall song you can find here (you can even listen to the tune!) As soon as I saw the photo I had those few words in my mind...it just took a bit of 'googling' to find the actual song!

Anyway...thanks for the challenge Jaqi - I really enjoyed it!

Gel Transfers and a Canvas

I've been playing with gel transfers this week; trying them on different surfaces. I put 3 onto this little chunky canvas (5"x5") and then finished it off with some thick gesso, Lumiere paint (halo blue-gold), Stuart Gill Alchemy paint (amethyst) plus some lace and a butterfly. I'm making a number of things at the moment to put on one side for a possible Etsy shop - this will be one of them I think. Maybe.
(I covered the canvas in gesso before doing the gel transfer and it worked fairly well.)

Below is a gel transfer of an old family photo which I applied directly to a woodblock. It worked really well but I wish I'd gessoed it first because I'm not keen on the wood grain showing through. I will keep practising!

I'd like to thank the 'Outsider Artists' for the lovely free image of the little angel. (Great website - go and take a look!)