Katherine Howard

Finally!! I finished the Katherine Howard piece. As you can see, It's another new technique, which I actually really like, and originally wanted to do collages like this about 10 years ago, but never managed to quite get it.

If you remember I started this in early Feb, and absolutely hated how it was coming along, so I set it aside for nearly a month and a half hoping I would grow to like it.

Just the other week, I picked it up, and started playing with it again, and I managed to finally get the look I was going after, for the most part anyway.

It's not perfect, but I am pleased with it. And believe me, if you saw it before you would see the improvement.

This is a collage on canvas (of course), and for the collage pieces, I used her signature, her portrait, a letter written by her, her motto, and her badge.

As usual this was done by trail and error, and there are several layers involved, some covering up the original papers completely, and I actually had to print them out again, because too much was becoming obscured.

Most of the painting was done with a brayer, but some was done with a wet paper towel if you can believe it. I actually really like that effect, because it's blends the paints so nicely and discovered it by accident when I was trying to wipe off a mistake. Love it when that happens! Though if you aren't careful, the paper towel starts to shed all over the place which of course could be really uncool.

I also tried the paint splattering technique with red paint. It wasn't until after, that I realized it looks a lot like blood splatters, and gives the piece a rather gruesome effect.

Especially if you factor in the fact that she had her head chopped off. I could see how that might lead one to think that the red splatters were meant represent her blood, but honestly that wasn't what I meant to do. I kept it in because I like the accent, but I do wish the splats were bigger.

That's all for today!