Art Journaling - The Creation of the Silver Lady

"Silver Lady," by Dayna Winters.

There's been a lot of talk and communication about the Blood Moon in October.  A recent art journal prompt suggested I "create the moon," in a work of art.  I decided I wanted to draw an image of the moon with a feminine appearance.  I've heard some of my friends say that it is not very often you see the moon as feminine - a lot of time the moon is depicted as male.  I originally started the piece with colored pencils.  I got a chance to pick up some blending stumps and I liked how they worked in terms of blending and minimizing the grainy-look pencils sometimes leave behind.  

When I had the basic image done however, I thought long and hard about doing the background with paint.  I decided to go with the urge.  I mixed a dark blue with some black to make it even darker - I wanted to emulate the look of deep space and a darkened sky.  As I worked the paint around the moon image I drew, I just went with it, not worrying about whether or not I went over the lines.  I spread paint into the image as well, to give the image a more unified appearance with the dark space around it.  I took white paint while the dark blue paint was still wet, and I ran circles around the moon's body to give the illusion of light.  The stars in the background were easily created with white, pink, and light blue paint splatters.  I finished the piece off by adding a little black glitter paint to the eye, mouth, and outer light ring. This was my first real attempt at creating anything with mixed media.

When I put the painting away to dry, I had the image tilted a bit.  When I went back to check on it later, an interesting thing had happened...the glitter paint in the eye had bled and dripped down, forming a single teardrop falling from the moon's eye!  I thought it looked amazing and decided to keep it!  My son pointed out that I had painted the blue moon and the moon was not only visually blue, but emotionally blue too.  I titled this piece: "Silver Lady," and the signed original is for sale.  I'll be making the picture available in the form of reprints as well.