Ogres have layers.

I don't know why everything in my life is some movie quote (or usually a movie misquote) or other but it almost always is. It's either a movie quote or a song line popping into my head at random moments of time in my life. Like this post, it has nothing to do with Shrek or ogres. It has to do with a painting on canvas that I just finished and I was thinking I love that it has heaps of layers and that only little glimpses of the first layers are showing through and how much I love that only I (and my kids) know what it looked like in those first few layers before I even knew what the painting was going to be before I even knew there was going to be a face in the painting.

Yet, as I sat there thinking about how I love layers, what pops into my head? Shrek and Donkey talking about how ogres are like onions because onions have layers and that everybody loves parfait (for the record, I do not). This is what happens in my head all the time. I will have a thought or someone will say something and invariably a movie quote or song line will pop into my head. I will randomly quote or misquote a movie line and if someone recognises it for what it is I automatically love and adore them haha.

And now look at the tangent I went off in! All I wanted to do was show you the latest canvas I finished and close-ups of the layers.

I also love texture, as in the lumpy bumpy bits, the bits that stick out where they probably shouldn't or the bits that dip in and create interesting craters reminiscent of the moon or unexplored planets.

I find it rather frustrating how photos never do art any justice. This is why whenever I see people's art online I look at it knowing that it probably looks a billion times better in person. The camera lens is harsh and exacting, missing nuance and sparkle and the magic and feel of a piece. A photo never *feels* the same as witnessing art in person. Like this, you can't see the glittery-glitterness of the pentacle, you can't see the subtle deeper layers trying to poke through, the depth of the painting is off. I mean, it's still adequate, it's just missing the feel, the energy of the painting when it's flattened into a 2D form. You cant' quite see just how many times that pentacle was actually painted, first black, then white, then black again, then the deep red of the goddess moons on the human's forehead.

Anyway, for those interested in the products used it is primarily cheap-ass acrylic cause I don't have money for awesome brands like Global. I go to the cheap $2 shops and buy the cheap $2 acrylics and work with them as best I can. However... this also has Mont Marte Fluro acrylic, blue and green posca pen on the eyes, neocolor II water-soluble crayons for the hair, eyebrows and a green-tinged layer over the top of the layer before which was just gesso brayered over all that came before. There is also glitter of course, piles and piles of glitter and the paint of the pentacle is actually really thick. I think that's a bonus of having cheap paint, you can go crazy and just squirt it on the canvas and not feel guilty about wasting good paint. I have discovered I truly love doing that and the effect it creates. lastly one of my super favourite mediums to almost finish it off - Imagine Crafts irRESISTible ink. That is the goddess moons plus outlines, that is the outline of the face and the splotches coming out of the outline, that is the choker, that is one last drawing of the pentacle, that is her eyelashes and the dark squiggles and outlines of her eyes. I freaking love that stuff! Then lastly last was some white opal Liquid Pearls by Ranger, which I also love and adore. 

There you have it. Art as therapy rather than arts therapy. Yes there is a difference :) Art as therapy is simply the fact that doing art, being creative, fills the cup, replenishes the batter, generates the feel-goods. Arts therapy on the other hand is much, much deeper than that. But this, this was art as therapy, art for the sake of doing art because I want to make something pretty that I love. Hope you like it too.

In Joy!