24Steps Art and Design

I opened ‘Wonderland’, by Brett Westwood and Stephen Moss, on June 5th to a description of swallowtail butterflies. The excerpt describes the contrast between Sweet Williams’ bright pinks and the butterflies’ striking yellow and black as

an outrage against taste.

This description really spoke to me and I knew I wanted to make a piece with the sumptuous textures of oils. I felt a contrast of textures would help emphasise the outspoken nature of the scene. Then I decided to combine modern materials with more traditional ones since I was already knee deep in contrasts. Creating art digitally and printing on to acetate allowed me to directly combine digital and traditional work as the background shows through the printed acetate.

For the background of the page I used a new supply – Reeves water soluble wax crayons. They turned out to be very juicy colours when ‘activated’ with matt medium … #willuseagain … Wax has traditionally been combined with oil paints to create translucency and body, e.g. J.M.W. Turner is known to have mixed wax with his oils and old masters such as Titian used wax as a medium. Nowadays cold wax and oil is a popular combination. On my page I layered oil pastels and wax crayons overs the base of water soluble wax crayons and acrylic medium.

I hope this has inspired you to try a new combination. Have fun. Hugs, Ceri xx.

Tagged as: Tags mixed media, oil pastels, wildlife art