I have 4 acrylic paintings on the go right now, and three of them will have a silhouette of a human figure on them.  I’m hoping that doing 4 paintings simultaneously will help me be able to set a painting aside when it needs to dry, or simply stop and pause, so that I can come back to it with a different perspective.  I think that one of them might be done.

I started out by putting a whole map onto a 20″ x 30″ painted canvas.  I then printed out a mannequin figure onto an Overhead Projection Sheet, cut the figure out, and used matte medium to adhere it to the map-covered canvas.  My intention here is that when I pull the figure off the canvas, the map will show through, in the shape of the figure.

I began putting down layers of paint and assorted papers and ephemera, and painting over and around each and every thing.  I planned to pull off some of the items and the color from underneath would then be visible.  This kind of worked, but not exactly as I had planned.

While I was adhering things to the canvas I put medium both underneath and overtop the items.  Not a good idea.  If you do this, make sure that you only put medium ON TOP of the item you intend to remove.  When I pulled things off, often the paper from underneath pulled off as well.  But maybe that’s because I didn’t wait long enough for everything to dry, I’m not really sure.

The canvas, with the map and the figure adhered:

Starting to add color and assorted papers/ephemera:

Some Close Ups:

The building on the next picture is from a silk scarf from France, that I got in a second-hand store:

More color, paper, and overpainting:

I’ve pulled off the figure, plus an assortment of covered areas:

This is what the figure looked like after I pulled it off the canvas; I’ll probably use it in another painting.

Some detail on the Left-hand side that I really like:

A close-up of the head:

This is some paper lace that I’d stuck down and then pulled off. Again, I’ll save this for use on another piece of art:

Here’s where the lace was before I pulled it off:

Here’s the final piece. I’ve given it a glaze, to unify the colors, and burnished back the glaze in spots that I want to highlight. I simply can’t get a good photo of it, I keep getting glare. This is the same piece, using 3 different “flash” settings on my little point-and-click camera. It looks like it’s 3 different colors……….sigh…….I’ve got to say that it looks WAY better in real life than it does in these pathetic photos.