La Calavera Catrina: Mixed Media Day of the Dead Painting

Here's my latest redone canvas. I thought I'd show you the before and afters. La Calavera Catrina is a companion piece to the Shadow Man I posted on Monday. Basically I took an old canvas that we'd painted on years ago, covered it in gesso and then spray-painted through stencils to add a little something to start with.

My next step was to add collage pieces, acrylic paints and pen work to personalize it. Then I splashed alcohol ink here and there to bring all the disparate parts together.

Then I started blocking out the main image and deciding what parts to keep and what t conceal. 

I imagined her as a Painted Lady Calavera so I left her chest designs exposed but covered over a lot of the stenciling on her face.

Her mouth and necklace are two of my favorite parts.

I used caran d'ache neo colors for most of the drawing. They blend into the acrylic paint beautifully and provide their own shading when they smear. 

Her hat is decorated with My TCW Balzer Designs Feather stencil.

This canvas was originally painted by one of my boys in a spider web pattern with thick dimensional paint you squeeze out of a tube. You can still see the raised sections. To highlight the texture, I scraped off the acrylic paint and gesso down to the spray paint. I love the effect.

Thanks so much for visiting. Have a great weekend!