Monarch of the Glen by Frieda Oxenham

During our long and hard winter this year we spotted many deer. They were short of food and so ventured out of the forest to try and find something to eat. It is a joy to see them and of course Scotland is known for its deer. One of our treasured paintings in the national collection is The Monarch of the Glen by Landseer, and there was even a television series called Monarch of the Glen. I wanted to find an alternative to actual deer’s heads hanging on walls as you can see in many a Scottish mansion so I was delighted to discover an alternative using the Deer with Antlers stencil. This is my own tribute to the monarchs of the glens.

Here is the full step by step tutorial:

1.      Gesso a page. I used a 9" x 12" watercolor 140lb sheet from The Langton pad by Daler Rowney.

2.      Collage on the page using a mix of wrapping paper, vintage text and images, old music sheets, washi tape and vintage maps.

3.      Using Distress Crayons in colors matching your collage, add color to the page and then remove it again with a baby wipe through stencil Pomegranate Seeds Grape Apple. Also spray through the same stencil with a spray paint, color of your choice.

4.      Add paint (I used pink) and scrape it over parts of the page using an old credit or hotel card. Remove it as in step 3 using stencil Mosaic Flowers Repeat.

5.      Add some rubber stamping with a permanent black ink pad. I added some French text as well as some dots.

6.      Drip some pink fluorescent fluid acrylic on the page, spray with water and let it drip down.

7.      Using the mask part of stencil Deer with Antlers stencil and black Liquitex (or any other brand) permanent spray paint, spray around the edges of the mask, and also around the edges of the page.

8.      Outline the deer with a white marker

9.      Using a blank label element (from Tim Holtz’s Grungeboard set), gesso it black first, then add copper and blue paint till it looks suitably distressed. Hand write the text, glue it down onto the page and adhere the label over it with copper studs.

10.  Edge the page with a copper colored Shiva oil stick.

As per usual when I’m working on a project on a loose page I made another page using exactly the same methods as described above, just in case there was a bit of disaster at some stage. There wasn’t in this case, so I was left with an extra background. I decided to use the stencil instead of the mask on this page and sprayed through it with black spray paint. Version 2 is the result. I liked the page better in a narrower format so cut a part of it leaving a page that is 7" x 12.”

© Frieda Oxenham 2018. To see more of Frieda's work, please visit her BLOG.