I struggled with making and finishing art — it was a long week!

Meetings & Making

When I left off writing last week’s post, I had in mind to slap some black paint around, over those new collage starts. Well! I did it, it felt great, but I managed to miss recording a few steps. Here’s how the quartet was looking, a few layers in.

The idea here is to work on each piece as a separate 9×12, then recombine every so often, to add layers as if it’s a larger 18×24, as we did in Louise Fletcher‘s class.

First, I spread black India ink over all the pieces, then separated them and got to work with my pink Posca pen. Then, they came back together, this time with lighter sections toward the middle, and I threw a rough grid over each of them with a stencil, in pale green.

Finally (at least so far) I added some titanium buff in the corners and scribbled into it, then separated them again for another round.

Here they are, ready to go, looking a little busy. Maybe I’ll add even more detail, and then cover up a lot of it over all 4 at once.

This was a very good week over at the Paris Collage Collective. I do love a door, a path, a portal: it all signifies choice for me. My first two attempts were bland, but that last one I could feel in my gut.

Given the week of news that it’s been, a hopeful portal closed off by a heavy iron door feels about right. I’m thankful that making art gets me out of the news loop and into a better mindset.

After adding the stencil grids, above, I had some spare paint, so it went into the sketchbook, over top of some scraped down Posca marks.

Then: a skewer makes the most beautiful marks in the wet paint! I need to use that in a detail section of the quartet pieces.

In other studio work this week, I threw a bunch of layers together and got… not much.

I think this is that busy look that I want to mostly bury. Yes, this is way too much going on for me. But it was fun to grab collage and scribble layers to see what happens.

In better news, I scanned my gel prints from a couple of weeks back, and combined those to better effect. Looks like dessert to me!

Up Next

After weeks of waiting, I finally have a finished piece back from the framers. On the left is a print from Printmaker Studio, mounted and laminated by The Lab Vancouver, and supported and float framed by Kent Framing, nearby. Next to it is a piece printed by Opus, mounted to a wood panel from Rath Art Supplies.

Unfortunately, the piece on the left, gorgeous as it is, cost SEVEN (7!) times what the one on the right did, and took most of two months to pull together. Also unforunately, the one on the right was subject to my less-than perfect attention to detail, and still needs hanging hardware. Nothing is ever perfect, I tell ya.

I have two more options to try, more in the middle to lower end of the price range, and I’m confident one of those will end up being a great solution for local printing and framing. Hurray! I am quite relieved to be so close to a solution here, and pleased to see some of my recent Adaptive Horizons pieces framed up. Any breakthroughs in your week?

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