Still a Little Dotty.......

At Unstampabelles, the challenge is to GO NATIVE, and I have been playing with the art of the original inhabitants of Australia, and their method of dot painting - while I am a native Australian, my ancestors are from Europe, and so this is a new technique for me and one I have greatly enjoyed using in my work. I discovered it is not easy to do, and that there is a language involved in the paintings - just google aboriginal art symbols - and see what I mean. Here is one example

It depends on the artist and the area, and the clan of course.

Then there is the amazing rock art, some of which goes back 28,000 years old and predates known European known rock art. Amazing huh!

This photo comes from the Northern Territory, and shows work in the region of the Katherine Gorge (Nitmilik National Park)

I have been lucky enough to see some rock art work in situ in America as well, in Colorado, and that too is awe inspiring, to see the work of an artist from so far back in time. I have been to some sites in the Northern part of Australia as well, and just been so blown away by the work. 

This is a photo I took at Uluru in 2004 

So, using all this information and my interest in the art work I made this

The background is drawn by me, the image is from Google images 

and after I had coloured him up with Copic marker, using the dot painting technique 

I fussy cut the kangaroo out and put him to one side

Then I did the background

On a sheet of Whisper White, I masked off a space and using post-it-notes to create layers of TH Distress inks in sort-of hill shapes. When I was happy with these, I took the masks away, and started to draw on them with a fine black pen.

I really enjoyed that part

Then I added the kangaroo to the white sheet with dimentionals. I used my Copic marker to outline the edges of the sheet, and then mounted this on black and then SU Peekaboo Peach card on a white blank. The sentiment is a rub-on and I was tempted to colour in the letters, but resisted.

The recipient loved it!

It was fun to make

So, Unstampabelles current challenge runs for another two weeks

It will be interesting to see what you create