A Birthday Canvas

Well it seems I'm quite obsessed with Canvasses lately. Have been doing very little art since the start of the year and choosing canvases rather than art journalling when I do. The only time my 2 current art journals have been getting attention is when I have laid down some background colour from anything I have remaining on the pallet from painting canvases ;)

It was my little sister's birthday recently so I decided to make a personal gift from the heart rather than buying yet more 'stuff'. We have had many deep conversations lately which reminded me of the how special our relationship is. Even though we have 10 years' age difference, we are very close spiritually and for all our differences, understand each other like no-one else can. I had a strong need to give a message of love to her.

A very interesting thing happened....because she is a red/pink person and I am so not (I relate to a cool colour scheme of purple/green/blue the most) and because it was an intimate gift from the heart, I got a creative block! It took me weeks to complete. I knew I wanted to do a red/turquoise combo and for it to have a strong modern look. It started out as a faded vintage canvas with turquiose dominant. It kept evolving. I ended up giving it a red wash at the end which unified the patchy look that I wasn't happy with and turned it into a very strong red canvas. I am very happy with the hand-torn flowers which I made out of my own 'art paper'. I glued them in the middle only for a dimensional look.

The thing that made me most happy was that after I finished it, I noticed a typical art-journalling serendipity (art-journal magic moment which happens so often) The semi-hidden circle in the top right corner is of a similar style to my flowers (which I 'invented' on the spot ie. had no idea how they would turn out and certainly did not plan for the little sticker centres which ended up matching the scrap-booking paper I used in the background scraps) Gotta love that! :)