The Smokehouse

Today it was another dreary, rainy day here in Atlanta.  I feel as if we are growing mold on everything,  along with all the mushrooms that are in the yards.  Gross.  Luckily today the girls were happy doing crafty activities, my hubby was happy with watching tv and I was able to play!  

This canvas is based on a journal entry I did about the smokehouse at Don's farm.  The adorable building reminds me of a little cottage but truly was used as meat smokehouse for years. The farm was built in the late 1700's so they really did use a smokehouse!  Today the little building is full of outdoor toys and random stuff. Love the rock base it sits on, the door that is slowly rotting at the bottom, the weathered gray wood and the whitish-yellow chinking between the logs.  I just love this little building.  

 I started with a piece of scrapbook paper from my stash.  The color of green on the paper was an olive-ish color which of course I don't have in a bottle or tube. So out comes my handy-dandy color wheel and the mixing of paint! I actually came up with a color that matched!

Painted up the grass, glued in the rock base and gesso-ed a spot to sketch the smokehouse.

 I watercolored and tried my hardest to leave white space ... I was vaguely successful.   But yuck, the scrapbook paper in the background made my eyes hurt.   Out came the scissors and voila, the background was gone! Aaah, visual relief!

 Now, there might be visual relief but there is a VERY large white space.  In an effort, to use my stash ... I opened up my cabinets and found this old Donna Downey foam stamp that hadn't been used in years.  I colored on it with Faber-Castell gelatos and a brown neocolor and stamped away!! LOVED it!!

  Looking back at the process now, just stamp on the canvas now.  But no, I needed more.  It was raining really hard and I had SO much time on my hands . . . out came the Gelli Plate to add to the large mess on my desk!! (Actually it was at this moment that I looked over at my husband and told him that I need a bigger desk.  He really wasn't amused because he knows that means that someday he is going to come home from work and find a really big desk in the house!)

 This is my gelli print on tissue paper.  Tissue paper makes an awesome background because it is thin and a little bit transparent! I used an old 12x12 mask (which I cannot remember for life of me where or who it came from) and a little bit of white and blue paint. 

After the print dried the trees were stamped right on top of it! The paper was glued down to my canvas with matte medium.  Love that stuff!!

 Finally it all goes together and out come the pens come out for shading and doodling! 

 A couple of rainy hours later, a fun canvas with my favorite little farm building!! Good rainy days!