"The River"
Acrylics & Mixed Media
On

Canvas
12" X 18"

It is not often that a person can create a work of Art 

on a canvas that looks like a painting

but is not one.
This work was composed entirely without brush work.

The sizing used to affix the Gold,Variegated,

 and Silver leaf was painted on by brush.
That put an end to the actual use of any brushes.

The background on the Canvas was painted a Matte Black.

I applied Goldens Light Molding Paste to form ridges that would represent
 tree trunks 

on the Upper right 1/3 of the Canvas.

I did the same to the lower left to denote bushes.

Then I  I randomly laid down the leaf in a rough

pattern

and left it to dry.

At this stage I had not used the Copper leaf yet.

 You can see the black areas where, after the leaf had dried fully,

 I had taken a very stiff brush and scumbled areas of it to distress the Leaf.

That was it for this part of the background.

Once the base was dry I poured Goldens Green gold

atop parts of the leaf, let it sit for 20 minutes and started buffing it off.
leaving the  shiny leaf with a green undertone.
Next,

I decided where I wanted the water to be.

 I  painted sizing where I wanted the copper strips to be.

(I did not take a photo of this step, so the one above is just after I started defining the trees.)
Once the Copper Leaf dried, I then painted sizing in between the copper
and 

randomly affixed Gold and Silver leaf slivers randomly.

This gave the "Water" a visual  flowing movement.

My next step was to decide where I wanted trees to go on both sides of the River banks.
I dropped small splotches of Jenkins Green paint where I thought trees would be most pleasing and then formed them with Saran wrap.

This is a method that I learned a long time ago and I still use it a lot for shaping abstract trees on my Art.

Laying the wrap on the wet paint and manipulating it to form groves and branches is very effective. and once dried  leaves a very pleasing effect.
You can see on the tall lower tree on the right

The the detail is achieved by laying the wrap on the paint,

and  pinching the Saran wrap over the over it.
The darker lines are where the paint goes into the creases of the wrap

and are very defined when they dry.
Example 1

Example 2

The end result depends so very much on how the initial laying of the Leaf ends up,
and

what a person "Sees" in a work.

I saw, from the very beginning that this would be a landscape 

and have water running through the middle of it.

Here are a couple of close-ups of the work

this shows the Molding paste formed ridges to shape the trees.

this is a detail of the layers on the river.
You can see as well, how the Manipulated paint works with the wrap.

If you have any questions on working with this method (Saran or Cling wrap)

please comment below or send me an email.

ptunys@gmail.com

Hope you like it

~~Kathleen