Middle Ground

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mid·dle ground

noun

1. an area of compromise or possible agreement between two extreme positions, especially political ones.

2. the middle distance of a painting or photograph.





I have a journal page for your perusal today made for the express pleasure of experimenting with a new stencil. As you can see, I got a bit carried away but what better way to see just what it can do?

The ladies were cut and pasted down first, then I painted the sky and ground and added the stenciling last. I went back in and adjusted some of the values to try and give it more depth which included adding the lake and mountains in the distance.

This lovely little glass trinket was my inspiration for the slightly unusual tint. Yes, I could have used more traditional landscape colors but I wanted the challenge of trying something different.

I'm linking to Simon's Monday blog challenge where this week's most excellent theme is in the middle.

Blue Butterfly

I still have one more Flower Garden stamp to go but, after making five in a row, I needed a break!

So I played around with another new toy instead. It's an adhesive silkscreen from Martha Stewart and it's pretty awesome. It's like a stencil but with way more detail.

I began the tag by using acrylic paint to apply the fern design right smack-dab in the middle. Then I envisioned adding figures on either side, found a photo that would work and did an image transfer. Since image transfers are transparent, I went over the darkest areas of the ferns with some additional green paint to make it more opaque and stand-out better.

I painted in a blue background and added some black lines with a gel pen. I stamped a butterfly with white, then embossed it and painted the insides blue to match the background.

Martha probably didn't expect her stencil to be used this way but, nevertheless, it was good practice and great fun. If anyone's interested in seeing how these work, up-close and personal, let me know in the comments and I'll put together a demo for a future post.

It's pure coincidence, but I'm linking to the Monday blog challenge at Simon Says Stamp because this week's theme is in the middle and that is exactly where my fern ended up!

Asteraceae

Here is tag number five in my Flower Garden stamp set series.

The flower is probably in the Asteraceae family, which is huge, and because it starts with the letter A, I can link it to Simon's Monday blog challenge.

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I stamped the flower on to some Ranger specialty stamping paper and used distress inks to tint.

Then I cut it out and pasted it to a scrap of watercolor paper along with some stamped tissue paper. Gel pens were used to add lines near the base.

My watercolor paper scraps are from old paintings that didn't pan out.

Since the paper is expensive, I save them because I can always use the backside for testing colors, etc. Who knew one would become the background for a tag?