The Birth of Nadia The Painter
The creation of this mini introductory collection entitled ✨️The Golden Glow Up✨️ was born out of play. And what is creation with play? The first piece, called Golden Hour, is created from a recycled canvas, previously painted black last summer, with no plans for it. A swirly painting technique was used to paint the background, which was inspired by Van Gogh’s Starry Night, a classic, and, most recently, Katie Bryant of @ktscanvases over on IG. Whose work and narration style I adore.
Anywho, I was playing, experimenting, pulling out old sketches of line drawings I had drawn back when I was trapped, i.e, living in Ohio. Back when I was hopeful about starting my design and illustration career. Expressing my love for headwraps, my growing appreciation for natural hair, and protective styling. Before life and reality came in and almost certainly crushed that dream.
It is beautiful to see these ladies are finally getting their shine over ten years later. I spent months working on Golden Hour, simply amazed that I was painting at all, and astounded by how people would react to her when they visited my studio. It shook me, it surprised me, and it absolutely terrified me! I was making this just to paint, not to show and tell, and definitely not to sell her.
However, as I worked on her more and started showing more of her, the more love she received, and the more I began to believe that she is Her. That and the fact that God downloaded a major vision of what a collection of her would look like, I knew she was destined to be my firstborn child. ✨️ Feeling bold and inspired, I began to create for her sisters mini versions, using more of those line drawings made years ago. In addition, I am still working on an accompanying bag that will be perfect for my spring/summer framer’s market tote bag, wearing girlies. (Stay tuned for that.)
Deciding to add any fabric to her was always the plan. I had a torn old canvas with a sketch already on it that I planned to use fabric scraps to build up the headwrap, literally sitting around for years. Why I never got around to painting that, I will never know, but I was so excited to get to the fabric part that I didn’t think through the how. The canvas I was using was a gifted canvas that had what I believed was a DIY resin coating over the top of it. Why was it covered in resin? I do not know, it seems to be a normal store-bought canvas print painting, a good-quality canvas print. But nothing special.
Regardless, I moved on ahead, not considering that I couldn’t just sew the fabric onto canvas, so when that time came, it took me a few days to figure out what to do. And I had to do some more experimenting with the fabric selection and adhesives to use. In the end, I chose this beautiful Champagne Crushed Shimmer Volie that I had for years in my fabric stash, with some canvas fabric, and gesso to create a solid base for the fabric to sit on. This allowed me to create the beautiful draping effect since I couldn’t sew the fabric down. The top fabric went down with some Mod Podge and a bit of fabric glue. It was fun, it was messy, it was beautiful.
And thank you for reading Created Ones! ♥️