Breaking In The Mail Carrier!

...a housewarming moment...

    A good friend of mine has been spending, what seems like years, building a new home. (I think it's been about one year.) Anyhoot, my friend Juanita and her husband are finally in their new home! She and I had a discussion about how she thinks her mailman is gonna think she's a crazy person for the type of mail he's going to start delivering to her house. I told her it'll be fun to break him in. :) Juanita gave me her new address for a mail trade that we were doing, so stinker that I am, I asked our group to help me surprise Juanita and trip out the mail man! 

   A few post back, I had another friend Nan send me a canvas through the mail to finish. She painted the canvas background and sent it "naked" as is, through the mail. I figured I would send a completed work on canvas to Juanita. Here is a progression of how I made her 8x10 mail canvas...

I started by ripping away the shrink wrap. It tore on the left and right sides, leaving shrink wrap down the middle. So, I went with that. I left it on as a mask. It also goes to show, you don't need to plan these things. Just go with what comes up.  I took what ever colors of watercolor appealed to me and splattered and blotched it on. "Swish" came from the TV show Big Bang Theory. One of the characters said it when he won an argument. :)

Next, I outlined some of the watercolor blobs with black Sharpie. Under the "Swish" I included a definition. With Matte Gel Medium I glued down some gift wrapping tissue. Why? I dunno, just some interest. 

It's a housewarming gift, so I added houses, duh! LOL! ...and to re-enforce my obsession with drawing birds, I've included one. To make it stand out, I did some shading with water color around it. I wanted it to look like it was really belting out a tune, so I added splatters of paint flying from it's singing area!

I couldn't find any quotes on line to add to this work, so I made up my own. The number means something, but only to those that know about it. I'm slowly filling in the background with colors and additions of wax pastels with stencils.

At this point, it's almost done. I keep it in front of me to think, "What can I add to it?" Swirls come on the scene. More stenciling...I added, "Tweet." With my broken Sakura gold pen, I slashed in some gold. (Looks brown in the pic, but shines like gold in person.) I darkened the edges with dark blue watercolor and then a dark gray with a Spectrum Noir pen. Sorta went too crazy in the middle, so....

I rubbed it out with my finger and some yellow acrylic paint! I'm showing you because, I want you to know that you can fix it. Like the saying goes, "It's just paint. If you don't like it, paint over it." The above pic is the final draft.

I sprayed a fixative to the front. Slapped some stamps and her address down on the back....and sent it "Naked." Hope this helps to break in the mail man. :)

All the crap I used....again, including the junk mail stencils I made.