. . .prepared some gifts

I have been a bit distracted lately with personal and holiday matters, and my posts have probably reflected that. So today I will post the last two collages that I have scanned. . . but not the last of my collages. More of them to come. The collage above has changed since I scanned it. I added a bit more of the orange color and took out some of the big white blob. It looks better now.



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I had some black mats made to fit these collages, and I will give four of them as Christmas presents. The matted collages will fit in standard-sized frames, to be chosen by the recipients.


Although my goal has been to post a blog every day for one year, there is certainly something to be said for only blogging when you actually have something of interest to impart.

. . . experimented with gesso

by making marks with it on tissue paper, then letting it dry. I then tore out the tissue paper marks and applied them to collages. Lots of ideas are cropping up as I play around with painting tissue paper. Yesterday, I applied bright red, lime green, some navy blue, and some dark red paint to sheets of tissue; then I pressed four 12 x 12 stretched canvases into each. These are starting points for paintings. I figure even if I never sell a collage, the ideas and creativity generated by these weeks of experimentation will be applied to my painting at some point.

. . .debated the difference

. . . in my mind, at least. I'll explain: In a comment to one of my posts last week, Bob Cornelis(http://bobcornelis.wordpress.com/) brought up the subject of an artist's "body of work." I had mentioned that I thought my collages were starting to all look alike. He pointed out the distinction. This collage is another in a series, all using basically the same colors, tied together by the white markings and the rusty orange elements. What is my "body of work" . . . everything I've ever painted or created? Or is it a style that I develop? I'm so much in the learning and experimental stages that I don't know if I even have a style, let alone a body of work. Or if I'll ever settle on one thing and perfect it.

. . .kept practicing collages

This collage is the first of a series . . . I'm being stingy with posting only one at a time, because I'm sure there will be a day or two between now and the end of the year where I make no art, and I'll then have something new to post even on those days. The white marking in Gragg shorthand, if I recall, spells out the word "relaxing". . . more or less. That little tidbit was an accident, but applicable.

. . . regret the green

. . . that little strip down the middle of the corrugated cardboard piece in this collage. But it's stuck on there pretty well and not coming off, so we'll go with it. I have altered this a bit since I scanned it, and the one from yesterday, too. . . nothing is ever done in my studio as long as it's there.


So at 4:30 a.m. I'm in the studio, making more papers. . . so much fun. A sheet of tissue painted with gray gesso; a sheet of tissue splattered with black, white and gray flung paint; copy paper printed with sequin waste, both positive and negative; copy paper printed with plastic needlepoint surfaces; copy paper printed with the blobs left over from all the other printing. It will all be dry when I go down to make more collages later in the day. I also want to print up a tissue sheet with black, white and gray gesso using a purchased stamp I've had around for a long time. . . the stamp reminds me of concrete textures, cracks in the sidewalk, ancient stone walls.


I'm having a lot of fun staying inside off the slick roads and totally denying that I'm in some deep trouble regarding Christmas. . . not prepared at all and not really too interested. I have a week. . .

. . .were color-challenged

because even when I consciously try to make tone-on-tone art, I end up throwing in color. I just can't help myself. In this collage, I incorporated some of the papers I painted this weekend. Lots of yummy texture. And the circle of circles is a purchase paper.


On the internet I bought a bunch of one-yard lengths of sequin waste or punchinella. I had been intrigued with this stuff for a while and couldn't find it locally. . . of course I like that it has circles in it, and my order had different sized circles in each length. I plan to use it as a stencil of sorts, but I can also see using some of it in a collage, just as it is.


Since few of my relatives actually read this blog, I can divulge that Christmas presents this year will probably be art of some sort. . . either photographs or small canvases or collages. I have on hand various mats and even some frames for the works on paper. Now the trick will be to match the art to the recipient.

. . . fiddled around with

this collage a lot. . . I kept adding paper when I should have stopped. When the collage dried, I sanded off a lot of it, especially on the bottom portion. I rather like the effect. The top part was from some paper I painted last spring that I thought was a total loss; but I looked at it again and decided it was just the ticket yesterday. This collage is based on the same picture of a wall that I used as inspiration for the last painting I posted here.


It has really been fun and inspiring to work on these collages and on painting more paper. Yesterday I painted a couple of pieces of tissue paper with the goopy texture paint from Home Depot. I also painted more tissue paper with black gesso. Before the black tissue paper dried, I pressed a similar sized piece of canvas over the top of the tissue paper and pulled it off. It made an amazing print, I guess you would call it. I put that same piece of dried black gesso canvas over the top of the goopy white texture painted piece of tissue and the canvas became even more amazing. If you try this, be careful, because the tissue paper is very delicate while it's wet, and it may become attached to the canvas when you try to pull the canvas off. But, heck, that's a look, too, right? I also mixed some of the white texture paint with globs of burnt sienna and ochre heavy bodied paint. . . just loosely stirred it up a bit and slopped on the tissue paper. It has streaks of all the paint colors. I may have worked it a bit too much, but there are still some really good usuable pieces of that paper too.


Just for the record, it's 6 degrees this morning, with a bit of snow on the ground. The paper said the temperature dropped 30 degrees in an hour yesterday. . . from a high of 60 degrees. I didn't go out.