Last week was Litha (Summer Solstice), and I was inspired to create a new mixed media collage to celebrate. I don’t generally work in shades of green and gold, so I didn’t have a stash of ready-made papers to pull from. I hauled out the Gelli plate and paints and got busy! The first image is some of the pulls I did using stencils, textures, and odd objects I keep lying around my studio for just such occasions. The second image is what it looked like after gluing down all the interesting bits of paper I just created, but I do confess that one of my favorite little pieces got covered up by the golden sun I used to anchor the piece.

Next up, was a hare (a traditional symbol of solstice and this is also an ode to the baby bunnies that have been living in my yard since spring) and a lot of detail work to bring out the patterns and bump up the contrast with a combination of Prismacolor pencils, Caran d’Ache NeoColor II pastels, and layers and layers of gesso and matte medium to seal it all in.