Goddess With Gold Earrings

 

Late the other night, as I was testing my new Berber-inspired stamps designed by Gwen Lafluer for PaperArtsy, I was thinking about all the things I could make with them—greeting cards, journal pages, tags, ATCs—and debating what to do first. A couple of the stamps really spoke to me, especially the diamond-shaped one. It called "earring!" rather loudly. I thought for a moment about stamping it on shrinky-dink film, baking it, and creating a pair of earrings, but I was worried that with the shrinking, I would lose the details.

Using black archival ink, I tested Gwen's new stamps in my art journal.

An idea of a goddess with big golden earrings began to formulate in my mind. I did a quick pencil sketch of my idea and went to bed. The next day I was looking for the right paper to start the project and found the beginning of a portrait I made a few weeks ago. I had a lot of paint left over from a gelli printing session, and had used it up on a big sheet of watercolor paper by making a face shape, randomly painting the background, and stenciling with my Lemurian Leaf and Lemurian Vines in white.

Left: the start of a portrait; Right: my pencil sketch of a face with possible stamp placement.

I put the diamond-shaped stamp by the ear and discovered that the half-started portrait was just the right size! Next, I place the other stamps around the painting to see where else the stamps would enhance the design. I decided to use the zigzag shape as lace for the bodice, the smallest stamp as a neck tattoo, and maybe the arrow shape as a hair clip. The other stamps would be used in a subtle way in the background.

After penciling in the positions of the basic facial features, neckline and hair, I got to work on the earrings. First, I stamped the diamond shape with VersaMark clear ink under the earlobes, sprinkling them with Ranger superfine gold embossing powder, and hitting it with a heat gun. The stamp printed beautifully; all the small details were enhanced by the gold embossing powder.

After stamping the diamond shape underneath the earlobes, I sprinkled gold embossing powder liberally.

Left ear: the diamond shape after applying heat. Right ear: the unheated embossing powder.

Next, I used white embossing powder with the zigzag stamp around the neckline, and added the small rectangular stamp off-center along the neckline.

I used painters tape to mask off the background and keep the white embossed zigzag exactly where I wanted it.

After all the white embossed stamping was in place for the neckline, I added a wash of white acrylic below the embossing to create the look of a sheer dress bodice.

With black archival ink, I used the tiniest stamp along the right side of the neck in a vertical trio.

In this closeup you can see the neck tattoo, white embossed lacy neckline, hair, and background stencils. 

Then, I finished painting the face and hair. I pulled out my stash of PaperArtsy paints, watercolor pencils, and brush-tipped markers and got to work. 

Once the hair was in place, I used indigo archival ink and white acrylic to stamp the other three pieces from set EGL43. Here's some steps along the way:

I used PaperArtsy mud splat paint to start the hair.

I added green patina and aquamarine PaperArtsy paints over the mud splat.

While my stencils in the background looked lovely, I wanted to use the new stamps as well. I used Archival indigo ink and white acrylic to unite the foreground and background.

The goddess was almost finished, but needed more detail in the hair, eyes and lips.

Once the background was done, I went back to the face and hair and added darks, lights, and accents with paint, markers, pencil, colored pencil, and chalk until she felt finished. Here are some detail shots.

Here you can see details of the eye and subtle use of stencils in the hair and background.

The yellow and white stenciled design behind the earring shows through behind the gold, adding dimension and interest.

The uneven neckline and sheer white paint adds to the softness of the goddess portrait, and contrasts with the colors on the neck and trio of tattoos.