"dulijöh" - by Claudia

Servus and hollerei dulijöh!

Yodeling is a very special form of traditional rural singing in Austria, Switzerland and southern Germany and as I am the Austrian chick on the DT I thought it was about time to create a piece that includes not only some yodeling but also a typical subject of Alpine landscape and folklore painting - a roaring stag in front of high mountain tops covered with snow and ice. Hollodero!

To explain how "dulijöh" is pronounced properly I can only give a kind of approach in phonetic spelling, as yodeling is a kind of singing where the singer changes rapidly between chest voice and head voice and there's no way to write that down exactly.
To "yodle" means to utter the syllable "jo" - or variations like jöh, jeh and others.
[doo - lee - yay] may come closest I guess. ;)

Calico Craft Parts used:

- Oval Shape Greyboard Mixed Media Board - Style 22
- Fancy Plaques 3 - Mini MDF Wood Plaques
- Bellowing Stag MDF Wood Deer Shape - Style 11

There are lots of other beautiful deer wood shapes to use for a similar project (or even create a little series of rural landscape wall boards). Click the link to browse Calico Craft Parts deer wood shapes collection.

I started with priming the oval shape greyboard with white DecoArt Acrylic Gesso. I used a wide bristle brush and made sure I created horizontal brush strokes only (as the lines' texture would look more natural with a landscape painting than vertical lines). 

I used a landscape photograph as my model but changed proportions here and there so the mountain top and hills below would be in the right spots (and where's Bob Ross when you would need some help?!)

Well, I used a soft graphite pencil to sketch the landscape and mark the spot where the bellowing stag would be placed later.

I used mixes of DecoArt media fluid acrylics Titanium White, Cobalt Teal Hue, Cobalt Turquoise Hue and Cerulean Blue to paint the sky.

Then I went in with Quinacridone Gold, Burnt Umber, Green Gold, Sap Green and Viridian and painted the mountain and hills. I diluted the paints where needed to create lighter and darker areas from the same colour tone. At that point the texture from the brushed on Gesso started to add beautifully to the painting. 

The trees to the left were painted with short quick vertical brush strokes and various greens. I always mix the colours I have on my palette to get additional tones for more depth. And the good thing is: as the mixes are always done with the already used tones, they all match perfectly and look quite natural.

To finish the background panel off, I painted a thin outline with Burnt Umber (which was also part of the mix that I used to paint the mountain rock).

The bellowing stag was painted using mixes of Titanium White, Quinacridone Gold and Burnt Umber. Carbon black was used to paint the nose and eye.

To make my stag more prominent I added a coat of DecoArt media Gloss Varnish.

I made sure the the colour of the grass to the stag's feet matched the grass on the painted hill!
The dulijöh plaque was primed with a mix of white Gesso and a hint of Burnt Umber. The red outline around the plaque and the dots around the background panel's edge were painted using DecoArt media Cadmium Red Hue.

I used a very fine detail brush to handwrite the dulijöh with diluted Carbon Black fluid acrylic.

Once the painted antlers were dry I added DecoArt media Liquid Glass to them for more dimension. 

The finished plaque and stag were fixed to the background panel with stacked sticky foam pads. 

Et voilá!

Some details:

Djo diri hollerei dulijöh!!! 

So finally it's finished - yay! 

I hope you like my little rural Austrian project! (As I can't yodel at all you're lucky there's no such thing as audible blog posts....giggle...but the Seven Dwarves can....)

Thanks for stopping by!

Dulijöh and hugs and happy crafting! 

Claudia

xxx