I LOVE YOU

​This was just a self portrait I did of me and my husband (boyfriend at the time I did this). I did this in 2011 or so.  I actually did our portraits on a separate paper, in acrylics that I watered down and used like watercolors, along with watercolor pencils. I then cut us out of that paper, and put them aside. I then did the background of this piece in my sketchbook. It's very layered and textured. I modge-podged tissue paper and photo copies of some pages from favorite books of mine,  and then brayered acrylic paints over those.

​Then I also did a transfer using some gel medium and a photocopied photo strip of us, that you can slightly see on the upper left hand side. It didn't come out exactly as I had hoped, but it was all good for experimental purposes. I had never done gel medium transfers before, so I'll definitely need a bit more practice with that. I believe I also used some pastels or charcoals to rub over the lines in the glue-dried tissue paper, to create a more textured look. I then had some rose magazine cutouts, and the "I Love You" speech bubble was also a magazine cutout. After the background was complete, I glued our figures that I had painted separately earlier, onto the page. And there you have it...

This was all in all a very experimental piece.