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.

Re-Vision

I don't usually do collages that don't contain some of my own drawing or monotype work, but I thought I'd give it a try.  Why I thought that, I don't really know, since I'm generally quite terrible at this type of work.  In my last post, I included a collage I had made by combining different papers.  In keeping with the theme of clouds and rain, my intention was for the piece to express that mood, so I wanted to do something a bit simpler, softer, and more monochromatic than my usual riot of intense color and contrast.  (Okay, stop laughing; it is too possible!) The result was less than satisfactory; in fact, it was boring.

As I sat looking at this piece and pondering what might be done to improve its awfulness, I though perhaps I had been over-confident; maybe I should have started small.  "Go big or go home" is not always a sound philosophy.  So, I began cutting it into smaller pieces, which seemed at once to be an obvious improvement.  I worked on each one individually, while still keeping them similar enough to work as a series.

Symphony of the Rain (Overture)  4.75" x 5.75"

Symphony of the Rain (First Movement)  6.25" x 6"

Symphony of the Rain (Second Movement)  5" x 5"

Symphony of the Rain (Third Movement)  6" x 4.75"

Ingredients (all 4 pieces):  vintage ephemera, decorative papers, magazine cut-outs.

What do you think?  Better, or not?  Any and all advice would be helpful!

One More Time!

Like a dog with a bone, for some reason I just couldn't let this one go.  Maybe it's stubbornness, or, put in a more positive light, persistence.  I guess there was something I liked about this piece, enough that I thought it deserved one last try.  If you'd like to see some of its past incarnations, here is the first version:

 After getting some advice, I tried to fix it, but still wasn't satisfied with it, here.  So I decided to use Photoshop to do some experimental cropping, here.  Ultimately, I was unable to make a decision.

After putting it in my "scrap works" drawer, I came upon it again last week while re-organizing my studio.  I'm a big proponent of recycling old artwork anyway; most of my collages include pieces of my work that I have "scrapped", so to speak.  Call it what you will: reusing, recycling, thriftiness, or just being a plain old pack-rat.  Sometimes it works beautifully, and sometimes, it doesn't, but my motto is: It's worth a try.

I've also been inspired by Jeane Myers's recent series of gorgeous re-dos at ARTIT, whose motto is similar to mine: "What's to lose...?"   That's only one of many great examples, so please do check out her blog for several others that are just as awesome- as is all of her work.  In fact, I just noticed that her newest post is also about a reworked piece!

Here's my final (I think) version of this piece:

Exile

Ingredients: multi-media art board, vintage maps, vintage book pages, handmade papers, joss paper, graphite, watercolor pencil, Pitt artist pen, metallic paint pens, eyelet, vellum, PVA glue, acrylic gel medium, kitchen sink (ha!).

I have cropped the top, bottom, and left side, and added more book pages and a few other bits.  Of course, the main difference is the addition of the raven.  I felt it needed a focal point to pull everything together, but it had to be something strong in value to hold its own against all the bright colors.  My solution was to go with black, which seems to work.  It's entirely possible that this piece is way overworked, though I think some of the compositional problems have been resolved.  What do you think?