Good Thoughts Girl Mixed-Media Canvas

“If you have good thoughts, they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.” — Roald Dahl

I’ve been practicing drawing faces for almost two weeks. I’ve been drawing face after face, playing with the features and face shape to create new combinations. This project is the result of that practice. I also wanted to make sure that it looked like her head was full of thoughts and that she appeared very contemplative. I accomplished this with the menagerie of items on her head. She has an abundance of good thoughts, and the sunshine yellow of the page makes her look as lovely as a Roald Dahl quote.

Good Thoughts Girl Mixed-Media Canvas Directions:

Collage ephemera, old book pages, and postcards to a piece of cardboard with gel medium. Seal entire canvas with a thin layer of gel medium.

Cover entire canvas with yellow paint. Wipe away excess paint with a paper towel so that the designs on the paper still show through.

Sketch an oval for the face with Stabilo pencil. Add neck and shoulders as well. Paint this shape with white gesso, then add a bit of Dina Wakley Ancient paint to make the gesso slightly iridescent.

If you’d like a truly distressed look, wipe away some of the paint from the face with a wet paper towel.

Tear book pages to fit on top of the head like hair. Glue down with gel medium.

Using a blending tool, cover entire book page shape with brown Distress ink. I glued down the book pages before applying ink so that the blending tool would highlight all of the wrinkles and bumps in the page, adding even more texture to the shape. Add brown Distress ink around the edges of the canvas too.

Arrange Chinese coins, pen nibs, buttons, flowers, and other embellishments on top of the book page hair. Color some of the embellishments with a small amount of Ocean paint by Dina Wakley. Glue with a strong adhesive like E6000.

Draw in face with Stabilo pencil. To give a truly sketched look, leave the imperfections, foundation lines, and other mistakes. Add more sketched lines by scribbling around the edge of the face, around the hair shapes, and the edges of the canvas.

Dab Ocean paint by Dina Wakley onto the girl’s eyes. Warning: Stabilo pencil is water-soluble, so you will have to fill in the details again after the paint is applied. Also, do not scrub or brush the paint on because that will cause the Stabilo pencil to darken your paint color. Just dab on the color with a sponge or your finger, with a straight up and down motion. When paint is dry, add in the details again with the Stabilo pencil.

Using the blending tool, add some brown ink over the entire face. Dab your finger in the ink and add some smudges for a truly distressed look.

Spray ink through stencil with Mustard Seed Distress Spray Ink around the corners of the canvas. Dab away excess ink with a paper towel.