Life Began In a Garden- entry by Gabby

by Gabby
(West Midlands)

Art Journal Round Robin Life Began In a Garden- entry by Gabby

Sharons Heavenly Journal is an absolute delight , and a wonderful artwork. To be the first to put paint to paper s, so to speak, in this gorgeous book was a huge responsibility and rather daunting. Encouraged by her lovely welcome page, which urges contributers not to worry and just get stuck in, I felt brave and did just that.
I began by painting a sky blue background with hints of pink.

I stamped the title ' Life Began in a Garden' in distress ink. I cut roses from decoupage sheets and definitions for 'rose', 'garden' and 'heavenly' from an inexpensive dictionary and adhered with matte gel medium.
I knocked back the shine and colour with a layer of gesso, wiped back where I wanted more colour to show through. I kept a space to the right quite free. I made a transparency from a photocopy and acrylic gloss medium/varnish. The image was taken from a Christmas card of the statue of Virgin and Child on the outside of Lichfield cathedral. I adhered the transparency with Matte medium underneath and a coat of gloss medium/ varnish over the top covering the entire piece. I used pan pastels to add further colour and definition to the piece adding a haze of yellow around the transparency. I outlined the stamped wording in black and copied a verse from a book I have about roses around the transparency.

Finally I stamped a variety of leaves here and there, sealed the piece with a spray and signed my 'paining name' - Gigi.
I really like the transparency and will play with these much more often in future.

Art Journal Round Robin Life Began In a Garden- entry by Gabby