I haven't been doing a lot of collage work that I plan to offer for sale, but I thought you might still be interested in hearing how I made one of my recent pieces that I have hanging in a small show.
This piece is called "What Are You Looking At?" and it's one that I like quite a lot.
As always I start with a more or less blank canvas, this one has been covered with a goldish-black paper that I quite like. It's wrinkly but stretchable and has a nice texture to it. Though it's going to get covered up, it's good to know that good paper forms the foundation of this piece.
I then start adding things. As I said, I tend now to cover up the foundation. My reason for including the paper is to make sure the sides of the canvas are covered. Lately I've been using wider edged canvases that I don't frame and I really dislike seeing blank white canvas sides on a piece.
I really enjoy the process of moving things around and picking and choosing what images I want to use as the focal point. At first I wanted to use a character I haven't worked with for a while
I love this guy, but I decided to once again go with a female character
I chose this one because I love the expression her face, plus there's a hint of sensuality with the clothing a bit low cut. Usually my ladies are dressed to a T, but there's just something about this woman that I love.
After deciding on which character to use, I decide on additional elements to add such as this key
And I make sure the sides are covered
And this is the piece completed, hanging in the gallery. One thing I'd done was to lightly color in the woman's cheeks with a pink watercolor pencil. It's not at all obvious but I like the hint of pink, and I think I might do this again, color in parts of the character's image.
I hope you like this piece, and that you've enjoyed this journey through my creating a collage
later
lin
One of my Facebook buddies recently invited me to exhibit some of my work in an upcoming exhibition he's running. (Thanks Ricky Gagnon!)
I decided to do four small pieces that could be sold individually or as a set. And I decided that it would be fun to recreate (sort of) a set of note cards I have for sale in my shop (here).
I've been moving away from using canvases with narrower edges, opting instead for wide gallery style like this (it's not the edge of these canvases but just an example of what I mean by wide)
I just think they look better. Which does create a bit of a problem for me since most of my small collages have that narrower edge, and most are too small to be framed in a ready made frame. But I digress.
So anyway, I decided upon using wide edged 5x7 canvases to sort of mimic the note cards' size. I also decided to use a variety of Italian Florentine papers that I was able to get from a shop called 32 North Supplies on Etsy, which sells a huge variety of fancy papers, Dresden foil scrap, and other great items. The designs are all gold/ivory based. I also decided to use gold foil paper which I think I bought at the Rhode Island School of Design store.
I worked very quickly on these and didn't take any process photos, but I just wanted to share what they look like. I still haven't decided on the captions to include - or if I should even include them. I think I will, though, because I do want them to be amusing pieces rather than just vintage style mood pieces.
Unless they sell at the show, these pieces will eventually end up in the shop, or on Fine Art America where I am going to be listing many of my pieces.
So what do you think of them?
later,
lin
