Turisas

Drawing, painting skills and addition of mixed media love!
We adore Riikka's masculine creations, one in kind and so creative! 
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You may or may not know that I’m a metal head so to say. While I can listen to many music genres, I really prefer heavy metal above all of those. And one of the great loves I have amongst the genre is Turisas, a Finnish ‘viking metal’ band though they themselves prefer not to be called that.

About a year ago I shared a canvas called “Heart of Turisas” here in Mixed Media Place and now it’s time for another Turisas themed creation. This time I was inspired by the new gig set up the band has – a giant banner with the band members stylized in icon-like way. I’ve been looking the banner design some time now and decided to make my own take using that and the singer of the band as my inspiration.

I started by sketching the face lightly and then added the colors in using acrylics and black gesso. I painted most of the cape red and the face with different flesh tones and the hair with brown and then treated the whole background black with gesso.

 

Next I started adding the bibs and bobs to the canvas. I tried to keep it manly and thus not adding any flowers and also tried to add music related things in the mix. There’s a pick, a piece of a speaker, some guitar strings and a headphone in there. I added the pieces to the canvas using 3D Gloss Gel. After letting the medium dry, I then painted everything first black and then started bringing the colors again in. This time I used acrylics mixed with Mica powder, mists and lastly PanPastels. The face of the character is drawn using PITT pens and a pencil.

My great intention is to give this to the band if they want it, but let see how it goes. Until now the warlord has been staring me from a shelf above the TV. Maybe it’s good to have him there watching over us, guarding like an iconic being should?

Products from Mixed Media Place: 

Crowned Spring

Are you ready to welcome Spring?

Why not take a canvas and celebrate a new season with paints and pencils? :)
We are sure Riikka's new project will inspire you to do so...

This canvas has a few inspirations.

First of all, there's a co-worker whose nickname is "king" and then there are my previous lady canvases.

Not so long ago one of my friends challenged me to share three works by me for five consecutive days and one of the triplets I shared were "leaps of faith". Those works were such that I took a leap and tried something new and I was totally prepared to fail.

They all turned out ok after all and one of those was my very first lady canvas. Seeing it again after some time made me see all the mistakes and things that I could improve. You can see where this is going, right? So I wanted to improve my skills and take another go.

 

My co-worker's nickname made me think of crowns and then all I had to choose was what kind of a crown I was doing.

I was on my way to work and grabbed my phone and googled "fantasy crown" - one of the pictures that popped to the screen was white crown with branch-like shapes and crystals. Especially those branches inspired me so I went with spring.

I tried to capture the tenderness and even the fragile nature of spring in my canvas. The branches are still bare but there's hints of green in her hair and painted on to the tree branches. There are also egg-styled shapes in the mix and a few flowers also.

Her hair is made out of feathers and soft wool and on top there's cobweb style thread. The background is painted with peach and pink shades and the halo behind her head should give an idea of the rising sun.

I used acrylic paints to paint the background and also gave the first coat of paint to the spring itself with those.
I then drew the features with PITT pens and a pencil.
To give the whole piece a dream-like haze, I used PanPastels on top to soften the edges.

Materials from Mixed Media Place: