J is for Jewels

Jewels, glass beads, rhinestones or whatever you would like to call little bits of shiny glass, they are something I’ve had a recent interest in gluing to my artwork.

It started with a handmade book I made for my eldest daughter.

I wanted to see if I could get a glistening 3-D effect with the beads. I am also fascinated by acrylic gel medium and its versatility. I love the stuff. You can coat, glue, texture and pretty much manipulate it to your heart’s desire.

Next I dragged out a canvas and started attaching rhinstones and beads. This is ‘You are Loved’, a piece that is still a work-in-progress as I get didstracted easily.

My first adventure into true mixed media. I’ve bought more gems and shiny objects to attach to it. I’ll get back to it at some point.

In the meantime, I have another work-in-progress on the boil (yes, I have lots of works-in-progress :D). This one, working title – ‘Circles’, was the precursor to ‘Autumn Wind‘. You can actually see it in the background of one of the ‘Autumn Wind’ progress shots. ‘Autumn Wind’ is finished, however ‘Circles’ is not. It started off as a fandom experiment with self -leveling gel. I slapped down some colour onto a small canvas. I didn’t like the way thecolours turned out so it sat around my studio for awhile. Then I hit on the idea of painting over most of it and leaving circles open to let the background been seen. I thought it would make an interesting design, which it did. However, due to the underlying not-so-good background, it has faults. I started adding jewels to it with the intention of adding swirls of jewels around the circles (it is always swirls with me). But I dropped it and pursued ‘Autumn Wind’ which uses the same technique, but is far more planned background-wise. Incidently, I had planned to add jewels to ‘Autumn Wind’ as well, but on the advice of art group leader and my husband, I’ve left it as is.

And here are some of the rhinestones I have bought that may or may not end up on this painting.

So yet another exploratory path I would like to meander down. An interesting one too.

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Best wishes,
Liz
(tired after a long day at work)