Evergreen ~ collage (complete)

With so many metallics involved, this collage was difficult to photograph. I had to resort to using the flash on my camera to pick up the green hues which, in turn, blew out other colors. I'm afraid this is the best image I'm going to get and the closest to reality.

It has occurred to me that summer is coming to an end soon. Colder temps mean closed windows so I'd better get out the alcohol inks and get painting before that happens. Proper ventilation when using these inks is a must because of my COPD. I do miss ink painting and I can and will return to collage during the winter months. In the mean time I'm having a ball sourcing/creating decorative papers, stamps and discovering techniques that I can apply to this new (to me) art form.  

Collage Paper/Prep

Has it been an entire week since I last posted an update? I guess so! I've been busy trolling the 'net looking at video demos, browsing paper sources, all while waiting for a couple orders of paper I knew I couldn't produce myself (like bark paper) to arrive. In the meantime, I sketched out a possible idea for another collage. Starting yesterday work began on producing the decorative papers needed to realize my vision. I used Liquitex acrylic paint and lumiere metallic light body acrylics on tracing paper, let dry and using a metal ruler, I tore them into the intended shapes. These same shapes were then mounted on a golden yellow handmade(not by me!) paper I've had for several years. Looking at my sketch I'll need about 24 of these triangles to complete the task. I may use some decorative papers I purchased online to help the process along. I stacked the chosen papers and scanned them so I could see how they look together on screen. Maybe I should glue what I've posted all together as is and call it good...huh?

Note: I kept my Quiller color wheel by my side as I selected my color palette. It makes decisions so much easier for me.

Digby Redux ~ value drawing

Value drawing

Posterized version #2

Posterized version #1

And not a good value drawing, I might add. I half traced, half sketched his outline onto tracing paper. At the time I didn't plan to add much more to it. However, I started fooling around with a grade B graphite pencil and one thing lead to another. I loved this reference photo. A white cat backlit by the sun. Very dramatic. I wanted to get the values sorted out but tracing paper is not a good substrate for this mission. A large amount of graphite will almost fall off it and certainly wipes off at the slightest touch. I found as much on my hands as on the paper. I did wind up putting the original image into GIMP, greyscaled it and posterized it to get a better idea.

I never tire of including Digby in my artwork. He was a wonderful subject to photograph and wonderful companion to me for many years. In my reference photo he is waiting 'patiently' for me to open the door and let him outside. I can see his patience is wearing thin by the upward flick of the tip of his tail. Gosh, I miss him.    

Red Hat Ladies 2 ~ WIP

I've just started a second 'Red Hat Ladies' after running into a slight problem. I had planned on doing two separate portraits as companion pieces for the original RHL (link) but discovered the leftover illustration board wasn't large enough for my purpose. I had forgotten I cut a strip from one side to use for painting trials so was left with an odd sized, square-ish piece to work with. Normally I would've gone back to the alcohol inks until I found a solution but that isn't an option at the moment. Finally a lightbulb went on in my head and I came up with this composition. This is just a photo of my drawing on tracing paper and, once again, I realize how much I would dearly love to have a lightbox, especially when working with human faces. Capturing the correct facial expressions of these lovely ladies is crucial to this piece and freehanding was challenging but I tried to keep it to a minimum. I'm really posting this so I can see it online to see if it 'works'. I invite my visitors to feel free to chime in with their opinions.

The Good Ship Rhino ~ WIP 3

This looks a little rough because in some areas there are 2-3 layers of tracing paper overlapping.The vertical cut on the right was made to tighten the width of the format. I simply sliced the chosen area and slid it over to the left.

This will be the last update of my sketch before the final. There are still a few things I plan to adjust but I'm close to completion. Once I'm completely satisfied I will do a final tracing and post that before tranferring the drawing onto my working paper. As weird as this may look it is surrealism. I plan to post my thought process while working on this. I must say, it's a great deal of fun to let my imagination run wild and free. I love fantasy, cats, critters and who knows...before this is done there may be a few flowers that show up. Flowers are another love of mine. So fun to include it all in one painting.

The Good Ship Rhino ~ WIP 2

This project has begun to turn into a monster, literally and figuratively. As the ideas increase, so has the size of the sketch and my teacup has sprouted tentacles. I now have this taped to my biggest mounting board on my tabletop easel on the kitchen table. I snapped these photos just now so I could post a quick update. I've made some changes to the original sketch and added an overlay of tracing paper showing some possible additions.

Wreck of the Good Ship Rhino & a Shag ~ WIP

Inspired by the work of Yuri Laptev, I recently visited Paint My Photo (link) to gather some ideas. I haven't been on this site for ages and was amazed at the quantity and quality of photographs in their gallery. Over 1600 images, all copyright free. I found a wonderful image of a rhino, resting in a zoo enclosure, and saved it to my on-site 'favorites'. Later I stumbled onto another image of a beached fishing boat, falling into decay. The overall shape and angle of incline reminded me of the rhino. I did a tracing of the boat, then overlaid that onto the rhino image and they meshed perfectly. An idea was beginning to form. I added the cormorant later. Whenever I include a new 'critter' in my artwork I like to learn a little bit about it first. Googling revealed that the slang term for a cormorant is a shag. Cool!

I'm now in the process of creating what I like to call a storyboard. Whenever I create a piece from multiple images I like to work on tracing paper. Each element is drawn or traced onto separate scraps of paper so they can be moved/removed and adjusted into various compositions on a board. Because the tracing paper is transluscent every layer is always visible. An example of this process can be seen in the WIP Cawcus (link) , a painting I completed last year. I'm currently jotting down more ideas for this project in a small notebook as they come to me. It should be fun to see this evolve and what comes of it.

Just Sketching

I'm on the hunt for inspiration at the moment. Although we are getting some much needed rain, these grey days are taking the wind out of my sails. I did find the cutest photo of two cats snuggling together on Paint My Photo, posted by Kathleen and I decided to use it for a sketch. Lately I've been using tracing paper in place of drawing paper just in case I like the sketch enough to pursue it further and decide to transfer it to working paper. Tracing paper is cheaper than good drawing paper, it can be drawn on easily enough and holds up to erasing remarkably well plus there's no need to trace my drawing, then turn around and transfer it to my working paper. It saves a step.

The challenge here was to fix an area of the larger cat's face where it meets the head of the kitten. In the photo the eye closest to the viewer is kind of smooshed and distorted so it needed some tweaking. Once again, I'm posting this mostly for my own benefit to see if my changes 'read' correctly.