Telephone Pole Trail

This first photo is a picture of the work in progress, before much of the painting happened.

 I include it only to show how the piece evolved, since it's a bad picture.

The base is a 18"x 20"collage of book pages on canvas. Over this I drew with permanent black marker. I added layers of more book pages, music pages, corrugated cardboard, newspaper, sewing patterns. Using the patterns of the pasted papers to give the painting shape, I then painted with acrylic paints over top.

The snow is created using bubble wrap dipped in paint. The clouds are made with dryer sheets.

I used stamps throughout. There are hints of pearlized stamps in sky that only are visible in a certain light. I used the Illuminate Stamp pad for these.

Here is a close up of my birds, textured with.black microbeads over pieces of torn black tissue paper. Silver dots embellish their edges.

The inspiration behind the piece is the little walking path near my place which provides a view of these telephone poles and a bit of a messy building site. However a cold grey winter and its falling snow turned a routine doggie walk, into a striking moment with the starkness of the white snow, the grey undertones of frozen earth and these black birds. 

I've been working slowly on this for months, chipping away at it. I'm a newbie to mixed media so still experimenting and hope to share more creations soon.