Lucky!

This little cutie is called "Lucky"

The colors of this 8x8 canvas were inspired by the bright & playful colors of my Mexican heritage.  With Fiesta right around the corner, these bright colors are beginning to pop up all over our beautiful city.

  Every since April of 1891, our city has honored the fallen heroes of the Alamo and celebrates the victory at San Jacinto with a week long Fiesta.  If you've never been, you really need to try and make it at least once!

  For more information on Fiesta, check out the San Antonio Fiesta Commission website.

For this piece I used fluid acrylic, gesso, oil pastels, craft paper, a vintage hymn book, cardboard, chipboard embellishments, craft wire and glimmer mist

 The chipboard Lucky embellishment is from K&Company, Jubilee Icons

 I started out thinking of rolling hills, so I used Golden Fluid Acrylic in Green Gold

Once the green was on, I added Liquitex Gesso with a palette knife to create lots of texture.  Originally I thought these were going to be trees.

When I got back from restocking at Homestead today, I decided these needed to be flowers!  So I painted them with Holbein Gouache in Magenta.  Isn't it a beautiful color, the Artisans over at Homestead had these colors all over the place with their Fiesta items. 

I found scraps of craft paper, scrapbook paper oh & my favorite vintage hymn book for the stems & leaves.  No scrap no matter how small goes to waste in my studio ;o)  To add interest, I outlined the flowers and stems with oil pastels.

After starring at the canvas for awhile, I decided I needed more of the hymn book to balance my composition so I found another scrap that was perfect for the top of the canvas.



I started going through my embellishments and thought the "lucky" chipboard was just what I needed.  I added it to some scraps of cardboard and made a banner using craft wire.  I was inspired to add a banner because I'm been researching banners on Pinterest.  I want to add one to my shop over at Homestead but I'm not sure what I want it to look like so what better place to find examples than Pinterest, right!

At this point the canvas was looking a little flat so I added in layers of highlights and low lights to create dimension.  In the end I think I captured the playful and festive feel of Fiesta!

Viva Fiesta!!!!

Let the countdown begin!