Stars and Stripes and the Eagle

go hand in hand!  When I showed my red, white and blue painted canvas to a friend at work, to tell her that I had applied the colors keeping the American flag in mind but wasn’t sure how to finish it and she said “Paint an Eagle”, I probably should have stopped to reconsider how hard it would be to paint an eagle.

Hi folks, Micki here to share my patriotic canvas.  And as I’m sure you could gather from my opening sentence, I jumped right in and after much stomach churning, sweat (but no tears, yay) I finished my Eagle canvas.   And I just want to say for the record……sketching with pencil on paper is soooo much easier, than actually painting with paints.
I started my canvas by gluing left over old paper scraps using Faber Castell Gel Medium.  I used an old 6x12 from my hubby but really any size would work.
One of the many reasons I love mixed media is that it uses up all those scraps and because it’s covered with paint and inks and other mediums, it really doesn’t matter if the paper is ancient.  I’ve made quite a dent in my old, discontinued paper stash since starting in mixed media!
From the way I applied the papers, you can tell that I was going for an American flag look.  Once the medium was dry, I applied paints, using both a brayer and brush. 
At this point I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to do with this canvas, so I went ahead and added some texture using the Collage of Digits from Unity Stamp Co.  And so it sat for a couple of days, until my friends suggestion of adding an American Eagle.  Like I said, sketching on paper is easy!  Once I had sketched an eagle on paper, I cut him out and laid the paper on top of the canvas to trace an outline.
Well, it didn’t work very well.  Couldn’t see the marks.  Instead I traced the eagle onto white tissue paper.  This time I made sure not to trim (rip) too close to the traced marks and glued it onto the canvas using Faber Castell Gel Medium.

And now came the scary part!  Painting him. 

Comparing him to actual flying eagle photos on the internet just made me more nervous.  And I basically used a variety of paints – mixing them on my Non-Stick Craft Sheet.   This eagle has several layers of both paint, Faber Castell Gelatos as well as Big Brush Pens.  Even though I stopped messing with him after several layers, the last layer consisting of gelatos for shading, I still am not satisfied with this eagle  (it’s the feathers).  I kid you not, my stomach was churning the whole time I worked on him.
Since I did the background first, I now needed to blend in the edges of the tissue paper.  It’s not that this was hard to do, but I do wish I had waited with adding so much detail to the background, like the Dylusions Starry Starry Night stencil. 

Luckily, I was able to line up the stars and redo them dabbing Claudine Hellmuth Blank Canvas paint with my finger.  Once the stars were dry, I added shading with the gray Big Brush Pens.  I also re-stamped the Collage of Digits from Unity Stamp Co. and added some white circles using empty duct tape roll dabbed in white paint.
As a final touch I added the letters from Idea-ology – Alpha Parts Signmaker, covered with Picket Fence Distress Paint.
And the end result……..



Oh, I almost forgot, to blend the Faber Castell Gelatos I used Tsukineko Fantastics Bullet Tip pens.  I generally like to use my fingers but they were a bit to chubby, so the bullet tip worked perfectly.



Painting Eagles definitely needs more practice, BUT looking at the face, I can (and my hubby did too) tell that it’s an eagle.  And overall this canvas turned out great.  It certainly put me in a Patriotic spirit, how about you?
And the moral of my show and tell?  Just Do It! 
I hope you were inspired to get your paints.  

Supplies used:

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