It’s the 10th and I’ve got a new instalment of Inspired by to share!

Inspired by is a blog series by my friend Riikka and I. We decide on a theme (and that theme can be anything from a film, a book, a painting, to an item, colour scheme or material) and then we create something with that theme or thing in mind.

We keep what we’re making a secret until reveal day on the 10th, when we show you and each other our creations.

As we were preparing this in the month of the Academy Awards, the theme almost had to be another film… And what better film than:

La La Land

I’m going to keep it short this time… I was so excited to see this film and luckily for me, it did not disappoint! It was total bliss from start to finish. And I seriously wanted to (tap) dance all the way to the car when it was done.

City of Stars

I’ve listened to the soundtrack on and off ever since. The songs are real ear worms: I could not get rid of them, even if I wanted to. So when it came to my project, I knew I wanted to do something with the lyrics and preferably a mono print.

I got the idea to look into the galaxy painting trend from the stars and the planetarium in the movie. I’ve wanted to try this for a while now and I found a great step-by-step watercolour tutorial by Gaby Friedman, that I just followed.

I had two test runs: one in a journal to test the watercolour technique and then another one to test the Gelli printing.

Then I made the mistake of changing my paper. I used a mixed media paper for my test print but it buckled heavily. I decided to use a watercolour paper for my second ‘real’ print instead.

The result was stunning, but… the paper ripped badly when I removed the masking tape that was supposed to keep the border around the print nice and crisp.

So I went back to mixed media paper and did a third print. Which didn’t turn out bad, but I liked the second print better. Oh well…

Handlettering

I left the handlettering for the next day. And because I had let it percolate for a bit, I decided not to use the lyrics, but to go with the ‘ear worm’. I used all three prints and my test page to play around a bit.

Conclusion

This was a fun exercise! I loved playing with watercolour again!! I also knew this already, but sometimes it’s good to take breaks and think about things for a while instead of getting it over and done with. I’m happy with my results!

Now head over to Riikka. I can’t wait to see what she has come up with!!