Riikka Kovasin - Paperiliitin: There's a fire starting in my heart

Hi there! Remember the theme Mixed Media Place has now on its challenges? Music! Last one was George Michael's Freedom and now we have Adele! Please follow this link to the reveal post with the song and also some fabulous inspiration from the design team!

I adore simply Adele's music! Her voice is so captivating and unique. For this piece I drew inspiration mostly from the video, though. What immediately got my imagination spinning was the trashed plates and cups. Very quickly that turned into a mosaic style background for a canvas in my head. So at the flea market I went to hunt for inexpensive, great looking dishes that I could then smash into pieces! I had no set color scheme in my mind but quickly I noticed myself picking blue dishes up and checking their prizes.

I was also inspired by the burning paper buildings which I interpreted with the burned stack of papers and also the dark, gloomy color scheme. The burning of the papers was a fun experiment! As I didn't want to torch our house in the making I chose to do the burning in our bathroom and wet the middle of the papers before I light the first match. Otherwise it was good, but the extra moisture actually hindered fire burning in the edges as well. But with little trial and error and a lot of matches I got the look I was after!

For the center of the canvas I used the opening line of the song: "There's a fire starting in my heart". I used some leftover alphas for that, covered the piece first with gesso and then with black acrylic paint, added some black embossing powder and finally touches of Luminarte pigments mixed with clear gesso.

This canvas so much fun to do! I bet most of you would have thought I've lost my mind if you had heard me almost giggling when I was hammering the china! So push play and let Adele inspire you! we are waiting for your interpretations! Thank you for your visit today!