You can find the whole process in the gif below. I started it all with a charcoal sketch which I fixated because I had the idea to see it through to the final picture. Then I filled the subjects with watercolor and for the background I ripped and added papers and washi tape and fixed them with gesso. To pull it all together I applied more gesso to most of the piece. I did this with a foam roller to get an irregular pattern partially covering the scrap paper and washi tape.

Also with gesso and a stencil I applied two of the three butterflies and let everything dry. Next came another layer of watercolors in dark purple and blues. Once I was happy with how deep the colors were, gesso always seems to suck up watercolors a little, I traced some of the patterns and the subjects with black micron pens.

The second to last step was golden - hah - I really enjoy adorning my mixed media pieces with stars and a bit of gold. Sometimes I use leafed gold but this time it was pens. And finally, I felt like this image could do with a bit of a pattern in the moon and with a bit of glitter. This is a little hard to photograph but if you look closely you will notice it. Maybe I added a little too much but - hey, it's sparkly!

With mixed media it may seem strange that we are adding all those things to then just cover them up and paint over them. Why apply those things in the first place? Right, well, trust me when I say that there is something very cathartic about the whole process. From deciding which pieces to add to the picture, to ripping the papers to pieces, glueing everything and then bringing it together again with gesso and colors.

It is a little bit like magic. Nothing of what I added got lost but adds to the whole feel and even haptic of the picture. To me there is something wonderful to this whole process and the final product.

Maybe try it out on a smaller piece for yourself. If you have any questions at all, please ask me.

Cheers,
Oceanbee

Head	Head

p.s. This article was first published on my blog on Hive https://peakd.com/@oceanbee/posts

This is the final image. Or is it? Likely, it is not. I have already started on a perfect version of my ***Mother Earth ***painting.

Of course, there is no such thing as a perfect painting. What I mean is that I already started on a vector version of Mother Earth. You're familiar with vector vs. pixel, right?

But let's start at the beginning, not the end.

This here is a pic from the sketching phase. I am not one who can just magically and with a few strokes produce an amazing sketch of something that resembles a human. There are artists out there that do this wonderfully. It's amazing but it is not me (unfortunately).

Here I am starting to color in the sketch with a watercolor brush. This is all done in Procreate App on an iPad Pro. The coloring is on a separate layer with the pencil sketch set to multiply to shine through the colors. That's why the pencil strokes now are black. I like that look.

And here, I am almost done. Just need to decide on the background color. And as you can see from the gif and video I didn't really decide. Though at the moment I am favoring that muted pinkish red - LOL

Which color is your favorite?

Here you can see the whole process in a timelapse. Above pictures were grabbed from it to detail the process a little.

And that's it my Nostr friends for my first longform post in this community.

I hope you enjoyed this post. Comments are encouraged an appreciated. Thank you.

Cheers,
OceanBee