Progression in an Art Project

So I finished my art project a while back but haven't done up a post to tell you about it.   Today is that day as I sit huddled in a cuddle blanket because baby it's cold outside.  :)

I started this project with the high hopes that my lad would join in and make one of his own, but the method and the medium where just too different for him to wrap his head around, so I made it sitting next to him as he worked on his own project.  This gave me the opportunity to say.. so this is what I am doing now.. what do you think?   Or do you think if I do this it might work?   This proved to be a really really good thing to do.  He gave me some great ideas as well.  :)

I started off drawing a generalized picture of some mountains.  My son had started a pencil sketch of the mountains at the same time. 

I then started to layer some tissue paper over my drawing, folding it in to create mountain peaks, layering over top of each to hopefully create depth and shading.  All my tissue paper came from gifts or wrap that some stores use when you buy clothes from them.   The brown paper came from a book review.  Each layer was modge-podged well together and left to dry between episodes.

As you can see the mountains gradually came together.   I even showed my lad a quick way to add a touch of colour and he was quite surprised at how easy it was. 

Since this was a work in transition I wasn't quite sure what I really wanted to do with it.  I knew I wanted some texture and colour and to make something unique to peak the interest of my lad, so when the mountains where done I added some green trees (just triangles of tissue).  Then I got the brainstorm of adding some clouds that were fluffy.   Oh my...You should have seen the surprise on my boys face!!   Then he said "MOM!   That works!   Can I do one too?"

We talked about whether we should leave them white or experiment with how we could turn them into black rain clouds, but the risk was we'd wreck them so the risk was rejected.
 
The trunk caused a bit an issue for me.

I wanted to find a way to add some texture as my thought was to have the trunk pop out a bit... like seeing a tree in the foreground and having the background fade away behind it.

I tried laying tissue paper.. looked horrible and I thought "OH NO!!   It's been ruined!!!"  But then I got to thinking I could cover up the horribleness with twisted strands of tissue paper.   And it worked!   

You should have heard the lad.... "Mom.. I really like that.  You did a better job doing that then the other paper. "

He helped me cut the limbs for the top of the tree.  He volunteered to help me out with this.   Having the limbs hang out over the edge of the paper was his genius at work.
 

 The canoe.. oh my....

This was HARD to do.   We tried a number of things to make a realistic canoe and nothing really worked.  I finally looked for a canoe picture and VERY carefully cut it out, then traced out a canoe bottom and glued that together.

Then I added a piece of foam to the bottom to make it stand out from the bottom.   The lad chose the location and then we were done. 

Dad pronounced it well done and the lad WILL NOT let me remove it.  It stays on display in the bookroom and it makes me smile.  :)

This abstractly, see how it does art, was just so much fun to do and made for much conversation twixt the lad and myself.  I LOVE IT!!!  (the smiles it brings to me as I think back over it).
 
So what fly by the seat of your pants art have you made lately?  

Going to link this up at Kym's and Charleen's Art Post thing they have going on.   


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