What comes after Gesso?
Why paint of course! We all have our favorite 'recipes' or methods we use, and
here is mine.
I start with a color palette and an idea of how I am going to use these colors. In this case, I knew I wanted a 'snow' background and I knew I was going to scrape my paint on. This usually means heavy body paint and a palette knife.

For my 'snow' I used white and a pale blue, mixed just a tiny bit as shown. Load the palette knife with paint and scrape across the piece. I like to practice on smaller pieces first so I know exactly what will happen.
Let the background dry before moving on to the next step. The shimmery puddles of color are my next step, I load a paintbrush with water, then mix a bit into the color, and then spatters. Gently tap the brush handle onto your other hand over a practice piece first. Again, I like to know exactly what will happen LOL!
This is a great way to create an easy, abstract background that you can then add focus elements to. Tomorrow I'll talk about adding more to our background to create a theme!
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