Trials and Tribulations, and New Work on the Way

I have several pieces that have been laying around my studio that haven't been shared due to the fact that I didn't have a decent, fully functional camera. After much research and thought, I finally bought a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ1000. It was more than I really wanted to spend, but I needed something that would take excellent artwork photos, and a DSLR costs that much just for the body; then, in addition, you have to buy various expensive lenses for different purposes. Another point against a DSLR is that I realized that I didn't want to be bothered with lugging around a bunch of lenses, which I would have to be changing all the time, so a high-end fixed-lens camera seemed like the perfect choice.

So now, if the weather cooperates, I will be able to photograph those pieces, along with everything that needs to be re-photographed because I originally used my cell phone, and the photos are seriously lacking in quality. Especially since I'm going to be building a new website, I want the image quality to be as high as it can. I don't really want to upload my current photos, and then have to go back and replace them.

But now I have a new problem; setting up the new camera is somewhat (read: a lot) daunting. I'm afraid it's going to take a while. It has so many features, I'm not even sure what some of them mean! So in the meantime, I'll have to keep using my phone, unless they are flat and can fit on my scanner. Sheesh!

Anyway, I'm finally taking time from my technical studies to make some art! Here are a few sneak peaks of what's happening in the studio. Taken, of course, with my cellphone.

Materials used: vintage book cover, vintage maps, antique engineering drawing, monotype, book pages.  This one has a ways to go, but so far I'm satisfied with it.

I hope you are all having a great weekend, and making some art! Namaste, my friends.

Re- Revised (Major Fail?)

Well, it just kept bugging me.  And I said to myself, leave well enough alone, or you'll screw it up completely.  I tried, I swear I did, but that's just not how I'm made.  In the end, I knew I would never be satisfied until I at least made an attempt to fix it.  This is what I'm talking about: one of the pieces in my "The Traveler's Tale" series.  You can see others here, here, and here.

Here's the first version.  Well, to be completely honest, it would technically be the second; this was originally an old monotype that I decided to recycle.  At this point, it still felt unfinished to me, so I made a few changes:

I warmed up the white in the figure, because I thought she needed to look a little less frozen (or dead?).  The blue wave at the bottom was so dark that, visually, there was nothing to hold the eye from sliding off the page, or to bring it back up to the figure.  Lightening it seemed to anchor the composition somewhat.  I added the starfishes to the sky.  I then pronounced it "finished", and put it away.

This is the part where I started wasting a huge amount of time and effort, because I felt it wasn't finished.  This is kind of embarrassing, but maybe you can learn something from it; I know I did.

The first thing I did was to cut a little off both sides, to bring the focus in closer to the figure.  What bothered me most about it, though, was that it had a "velvet Elvis-y" kind of feel, and overall was far too contrasty.  I thought it might help to lighten the value of the water surrounding the figure, so I added some green paper which appeared to be pretty translucent- until the glue dried.  It turned disgustingly pastel-ish and opaque.  It's hard to tell from the photo just how horrible it was, but trust me- yuk!

Next, I tried a blue paper, but it was even worse (you can see a bit of it above on the right side).  Apparently I neglected to take a photo of this stage, probably due to being distracted by intense frustration.

Next step: rip and scrape off as much of the paper as possible.  At a complete loss for any idea to keep this disaster from snowballing, I could come up with nothing other than to cover it with more of the blue ocean map.  Once I had done that, it became clear that it was too light, and therefore not helping the contrast problem at all.  Darkening it seemed the only solution, so I added layers of acrylic ink until I thought the value was dark enough (you can see this below).  Problematically, the map didn't absorb the ink well, instead building up a gloppy surface somewhat like a floor that's been waxed too many times without being stripped.

At some point I also realized I had forgotten the bird.  All the pieces in this series must have a bird- it's symbolically important for the narrative.  I actually did two birds.  The first was a total fail; the second was okay, except for the color I chose for the lighter value.  Oh well- that hardly mattered now, with the whole thing such a mess.  What to do?

When in doubt, chop off another piece, of course.  Truthfully, I don't recommend this- I was desperate.  After that... well, cover up that gloppy blue somehow.  Also, I really wasn't fond of the way the water was cut up into pieces.  I was digging around in my flat file for a piece of silk tissue, and having no luck finding it, when I came upon some ogura lace paper.  Why not?, I thought, and proceeded to glue it on over the map.  I then used a purple map to cut new pieces for the bird, and glued it over the green. 

Interesting.  I think it's an improvement, and at least I don't hate it.  So this is where it rests- unless I take a notion to screw it up some more...

Note to self: Try to leave well enough alone.

Finally!

I started this piece several weeks ago, and then I just got stuck.  It's strange, that something that initially seems to fall into place so easily can suddenly hit a wall- that "I-have-no-idea-what-to do-now" place that leaves you feeling frustrated.   It's like you're breezing along a familiar road, when all of a sudden you look around and realize that you're completely lost.  When this happens, I find it's best to put it out of my sight for a while; if I keep pushing at this stage, it's like beating my head on a brick wall.  The result will not make me happy.

Something shifted on Friday- the alignment of the stars, the flow of ions in my room, or, more probably, the little people inside my head (ha!), and I knew.  So out it came, and here it is.

As Above, So Below

Ingredients: Multi-media art board, Rives BFK, monotype, vintage map fragments, watercolor pencils, 

Caran D'Ache crayons, various papers,  acrylic gel, PVA glue.

The Experiment Continues...

So, my ongoing experiment with doing collage 'sans monotype' is still going on.  This is hard, people! (Did I just say that?  I'm starting to sound like my students!)  Here is, I suppose you could say, the 3rd incarnation of this piece- sort of.  You'll probably recognize parts of it from incarnation #2.  I felt it wasn't going anywhere, so why not rip it up?  Nothing to lose, and lots of potential learning to gain.  Besides, tearing something apart is a good way to get out your frustrations, if nothing else.

This has several layers, and has gone through quite a bit of ripping and scraping of its own. It didn't scan very well, I guess because of the metallic joss paper; the colors are a bit off, despite my attempt to correct them in Photoshop. 

Self critique:
I like the colors, but I'm not sure if the joss paper is too bright/strong in value compared to the rest.  Maybe there's too much contrast.
I think the composition is the biggest problem here.  Not enough of a focal point; it's a disjointed jumble of stuff, like the inside of your kitchen junk drawer.  The issue for me has always been that I have difficulty eliminating anything, so it becomes too much, too much, too much!
Maybe I should cut the sides off?


Well, it was fun, and I did learn from it.  And I made a huge mess in the studio.
Your critique?  Any comments, advice, and/or constructive criticism are appreciated.

Tune in next time for incarnation #4...

Something New

For a while now, I have felt that I've been floundering around, feeling that I wanted to venture out in a new direction with my work, but not quite sure what it would be. This past week has been my long-awaited Spring break, and I thought it could be a good opportunity to conduct some very unscientific experiments.  I've had some new ideas attempting to form in my little brain for some time, and have been trying to figure out where they might take me.  This piece is one of my experiments. I suppose you could call it a more collage-y collage, as was my first step in this direction, Butterfly Buddha Child.

 Ingredients: Rives BFK paper, map fragments, acrylic ink, eyelets, metallic paint pen, book pages, Koh-i-nor pens, acrylic gel medium, photo image, stitching, PVA glue.

I'm not at all sure if I like it, or what could be changed to make it a more successful piece.  I think maybe there's too much in it; it doesn't seem cohesive enough to me. What do you think?  This is a learning experience for me, so I'd appreciate some real "critiquing" here, people- don't be so nice! Thanks!

New Work on the Easel

It took me so long to finish The Traveler's Tale: Once Upon a Time, you thought I was a big ol' lazy slacker, am I right?  Well, you're right, but also wrong.  While I procrastinated on the final steps of that piece, I actually started working on a new one.   (If you haven't seen the progression, here are Once Upon a Time 1; Once upon a Time 2; Once Upon a Time 3; Once Upon a Time 4; Once Upon a Time 5; Once Upon a Time 6. )

I began with an old monotype of a woman floating in the water, which I cut down to a smaller size, making the figure a larger and more prominent part of the composition.  Because the figure was already there, I had a 'template', so to speak, which saved quite a bit of time.  I decided to use three values for the figure this time, instead of just two.  Once I decided where to delineate those, I cut and glued the map pieces.  Instead of maps, I used some monotype  fern pieces for her hair.

  .

I'm not totally satisfied with it, but it's coming along.  The hair still needs some work.  I made the moon out of a large white map with nice blue lakes, then added some shading and craters to make it more 'moonish'.   I don't know what I want to do with the sky, and I'm not at all sure about the blue stuff at the bottom.  Any ideas?

 

Well, this is it, so far.  I welcome all comments, questions, suggestions, and answers.

Still Working On It

Remember this?  In previous posts I shared my compositional woes and color conundrums as I tried to work my way through the third in my "Traveler's Tale" series.  I thought this would be the easiest one, but I guess I still haven't gotten past that learning curve, if you know what I mean.  

I was really hoping to finish this before Christmas; there are other ideas I want to start working on before my break is over.  Also, this is what my drafting table looks like right now, and there's no sense in putting anything away when I'm going to need it again in five minutes. What a mess, huh? I decided I didn't like the map I'd chosen for the traveler figure, and I thought she was too small as well.

So, I enlarged her, and decided to cut her out of a blue map, using red for the shadow value.  I thought these colors would look more like the ones you see in fairy tale books or medieval paintings.  However, I tried several different reds, and they all looked pretty icky.  I didn't take pictures of these incarnations; believe me, you're not missing anything.

So, this is where I am now.  (Sorry, this picture is pretty wonky.)  Her hair is still one of the horrible reds I tried; I haven't changed that yet.  I couldn't think of anything else to do except to make the shadow value purple.  Green was the only other possibility, but I was afraid it would not contrast enough with the background, or with the blue.  I've also added some more fairy tale-ish elements to the piece, such as the dragons, the book with evil queen inside, the mirror, apples, flowers, and a story-book border...

What do you think?  If you have any ideas, please let me know.  Maybe, with your help, I'll finish it by Christmas!

The Traveler's Tale: Balance

I finally got a photo of the second piece in the Traveler series, which I had finished a few weeks ago.  I am now working on the third, tentatively called "Long Ago and Far Away".  So far, this second one has been the hardest; I knew what I wanted the figure to look like, but the background was a *&#^@!   The original sky map was printed in 1957, and I knew I would never find another one, so I scanned it.  Of course, my scanner only accepts up to size 8.5 x 11 inches, so I had to then try to splice the pieces together.  The map doesn't quite look like this either, as I wanted the circle to go all the way around, which it does not because in the past I have cut pieces out and used them, not anticipating that I'd do a whole series like this!  Lots of improvisation was involved.  It took me weeks just to find the right maps for the bottom part, and the right way to combine them, as well as what and how to incorporate the "land" she's walking toward.  But overall, I'm pretty pleased with the result.  What do you think?

In Progress

I thought I'd share with you the making of an artwork from start to finish... sort of. This is the third of my "The Traveler's Tale" series so far. This series is more narrative than my usual work, and is loosely based on the theme of the journey of life, both inner/mental/spiritual, and physical/temporal- not that these are by any means two separate things. I've always loved maps, and thought they were really beautiful; I've used them before in a few pieces, with interesting results. Here are a couple of examples:

Pathways of Remembrance

Dharma Mandala

For "The Traveler's Tale", I'm using maps as the dominant collage material. You can see the first one, "As the crow Flies", here. The second is finished, but has not yet been photographed; I'm just slow, lazy, too busy, or all of the above. Hopefully I'll get to that soon, if the weather cooperates.

After I have the general composition worked out in my head (I haven't done rough sketches for these because the exact composition depends too much on materials), the first thing I have to do is find the right background materials. This is really the most difficult part of the process, because the image in my head does not always coincide with available materials, so constant revisions are made as I try to come to the best compromise.

For instance, what's the overall size? If I have map pieces that fit, they may be the wrong color, or have the wrong "mood" for the piece. For example, a Cincinnati street map is not going to look right if the piece has a medieval theme. But how much can I splice parts of maps together without making it look too sloppy or visually confusing? For this one, I wanted the hill to be one map, if possible, so this greatly limited my choices, as I had only a few that were large enough. Color, of course, is another important factor.

I chose the map of British Columbia because it was the only light-colored one that was big enough. For the sky, I wanted to use part of an old monotype. It wasn't really big enough, though, so I knew I'd have to supplement it with something else- hopefully the blue ocean part of the map. So I fiddled and jiggled and moved things around approximately 2 or 3 hundred times, taping things in place with artist's tape (not supposed to tear the paper), and then moving them again. Too many variables!! Eventually I get tired of this and just decide to go with what I've got at this point.

So, I glued the map piece on. As you can imagine, gluing something so huge (the overall size is about 20 x 27) can be quite problematic. For pieces this large, I use Grafix double- tack mounting film, but great care must be taken because if you put it down in the wrong spot, that's where it stays! It's great, though, because there's no wrinkling. I also attached a couple of extra map pieces, such as the one I added at the top of the hill, to make it a little taller.

The monotype I used had a tree on it which overlapped the sky too much to make it feasibly removable, so I decided I'd have to keep it. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow, right? I cut around the part of the tree that extended below the sky, then glued the sky on using the same mounting film.


Next I brewed up a mixture of acrylic inks to stain the map an appropriate color. I rubbed this on with a rag that was formerly an old cotton t-shirt, and VOILA!

Here is the new piece, so far.

Tune in next time, when we venture into the exciting and dangerous realm of (dhunt-dhunt-DHUN) IMAGE TRANSFER!

The Traveller

Here is the finished version. I darkened parts of the background to hopefully lead the eye back toward the figure, and balance the visual "weight" of the birds. (Thanks, Michael!) What do you think?