New Directions are the inspiration in January in addition to using frames and drawings on hand. So, to fit a silver frame, I worked with a drawing of trees to get started on Arches 140 lb cold pressed paper.

Thought it would also be interesting to work with a neutral palette. Once the trees were painted, some of the trunks appeared as ball gowns to me so I went with the Cotillion theme.

The trees needed to be grounded and I added detail with a black paint pen

With the new theme, regular leaves wouldn’t work so I looked at adding rice paper or some sparkly fabrics that I found at the fabric store.

Shapes of a translucent slightly blue rice paper with texture helped define the leaf shapes before they were applied but decided they looked too much like trees - imagine!

So now I looked at layering the silver, pink and blue sparkly fabric covering similar areas and now I was back at the dance. so I applied them with diluted matte medium and let it dry thoroughly overnight before pressing flat from the back side with heavy books.

After cleaning up a few spots and defining a few details, I thought it appropriate to “carve” my name in one of the trees.

Cotillion Trees