Step by Step Harvest Moon in Powertex

My Design Team Member challenge this month was to create something representing Autumn and Harvest. Immediately in my mind an image of a gorgeous Harvest Moon appeared, with vivid autumnal colours framing a simple  sillhouette.


Having a look through the Powertex UK website I was drawn to the large Styrofoam Circles and metal base as the perfect shape to work with.


To start off, I covered the entire circular base with yellow hardener, which I also sprayed with mahogany bister before drying with a hair dryer to create my first layer of texture.  I think it looks like a cake at this stage.

Now it was time to gently add a layer Stone Art to one side of the circle, to create some moon like texture.  I also added a bit of stoneart to the edges of my circle. Now it resembled a cake with a dusting of icing.

 

From here, I did one of my favourite things to do with Powertex, swirl it on.  I swirled on Red and Yellow, gradually adding more Stone Art as I went, to create some beautiful patterns on my sculpture.  After adding each swirl, I very gently rubbed in more stone art, building up lots of crater like textures in differing shades of colour.

  

I used some Powertex 3D Sand  to add some more subtle texture to the edges.

 

I was fairly happy with it so far, but wanted it to have a really deep sheen, and the best thing to help me achieve that was PowerWax 

I dipped a small sponge in some of the wax, then into my Autumnal Pigments (I chose Copper, Pearl Red, Clear Gold and Pearl White)  I gently rubbed in a circular motion all over my sculpture.  Making sure to work my way deep into all those lovely little crackles and crevices.  The Copper, Pearl Red and Clear Gold worked to enhance the swirls I had created, and I then went over the whole thing again with the Pearl White to blend them all in together.

My finishing touch for the front of my sculpture was to Paint a very fine lined image of some wheat sheafs in Black Acrylic for the sillhouette

To create the back of my moon, I simply swirled some more Red and Yellow Powertex over the layer I had already put on, added some bister and blasted with a hair dryer to create lots of beautiful textures.  Once this was thoroughly dry, I repeated the same process with the PowerWax and Pigments

 

I am really pleased with how this turned out, because it is so close to the image I had in my mind's eye.  It was really easy to do, and you don't even have to be great at painting because the wheatsheafs really are just very thin lines of black paint with a few whispy sheafs at the top.  

I would love to see what creations you come up with with an Autumnal theme - if you don't already know there is a facebook page dedicated to seeing all your lovely makes www.facebook.com/powertexaddicts

If you fancy seeing more of what I get up to, my facebook page is www.facebook.com/artmuralsbydonnamcghie

and my website is www.artandmurals.co.uk