Be Brave, Be Joyful

I've been working on a bit of Intentional Art for Neeps's room over the past week, and today I finished it up (minus spraying it with sealant, which I'll do tomorrow).  I chose to continue the vaguely nebula-ish theme I started with the heavenly foxes I did before he was born, which meant using a lot of purple and silver, with hints of blue and magenta.  It's basically a glitterific version of my own personal mantra, which I think is a good one (obviously, or I wouldn't use it), and appropriate for just about anyone, including little kids.

I started out by doing an under-drawing of the sigil I use to represent the phrase, "Be Brave, Be Joyful":

Kind of like a hula-dancing snowman?

I did this in black indelible ink, because I wanted it to act like the "bones" of the image, upon which everything else would hang.  I didn't necessarily intend for it to show through on the final image and more than our skeletons show through our skin, but it was an important piece of support.  I painted over the ink with silver acrylic, then sprinkled that with silver glitter, and finally went over the whole thing with a wash of purple.  Then I did my best approximation of a rainbow pull* with magenta, purple, and blue glitter:

(basically I just sort of tilted it and hoped for the best, then swirled up the corners with a brush)

Once that was nice and dry (and smacked on the counter a lot to try to remove excess glitter) I came back with black acrylic to write the actual phrase, "Be Brave Be Joyful".  It still needed something from a visual-weight standpoint, tho', so I added some horizontal lines (and thereby accidentally put the I Ching symbol for thunder, which is so incredibly perfect that I'm pretty sure my subconscious must have been in overdrive).

Then, of course, there needed to be more silver glitter over the letters.

But then it was too much silvery glitter, so I went over it with a wash of black, to take down the foreground bling and bring the focus back to the phrase:

Glitter is hard to capture in photographs.

I'm reasonably satisfied with the results, which are pleasingly graffiti-like (and, obviously, appealingly glittery) but I may eventually call this one a Rough Draft and do it again.  (Artists are allowed to do that, you know.)





*tracking that video down made me incredibly nostalgic for my silk-screening days.  ::sigh::  I need more free time/disposable income.