'Dove Tree Mandala'
copyright 2012 by Shiloh Moore
Mixed Media on Canvas
14"x14" square
I've had this piccie in mind for a long time. In early July I made a scribble that had the beginnings of the idea:
I wanted to use the tree as a circle in a square like a mandala. I've been looking at art by mixed media artists so I wanted to experiment and use different media and textures.
In the foreground I made doves using the design I created for the doves in
"Be Free" (Sunday Feb 12, 2012 on ByShi). I made them from beautiful black and purple musical manuscript papers by 'Alison Ellis Design - A Formal Affair'.
In the background, to make the circle in the centre, I glued down some out-of-copyright manuscript within the circle. Then I scrunched some tissue paper and glued that down, before doing the wash with watercolours in greens. Here is the paper with tissue:
For the sky around the tree I glued down text from a book I bought cheaply from a thrift shop. Then I covered this with scrunched tissue paper and then coloured it using watercolours.
I joined the two backgrounds together and outlined them in black:
Then I thickened the outline in pen and added design to the sun and the trunk of the tree.
I liked it as is, but as it's such a large canvas I thought it still needed a foreground. So I went ahead and added the cut out doves and outlined them in pen. I put tiny doves in the corners and added the wavy lines to the corners to give it a finished look and so the corners didn't look bare.
'Dove Tree Mandala'
copyright 2012 by Shiloh Moore
To me this symbolises peace, freedom, beauty, earthiness, nature and love.
