Blue Collage WIP

This is a work in progress (WIP). I keep arranging and rearranging the elements; this is an arrangement I like enough to post here. You can click the image to see a larger version.

Rebekah

Rebekah is my (Jane) granddaughter who will be 4 in two months. She's the daughter of Bruce,my youngest son, and Lauren; they live about 30 minutes away. I see Bruce and Rebekah fairly frequently, usually on the nights Lauren has choir practice and Bruce wants adult company. They're a lot closer than the South Carolina grandchildren! Lauren's father just sent me this picture, taken at his house. Aren't digital cameras and email fun?

Collage Start

I cut up a very bad, very failed painting which had some areas of lovely, layered color. The pieces are 3-4" on a side. Then I opened my collage box and glued stuff on to make a teeny collage. I could stop here and float it above mat board and frame it. Or I will probably go on and stick some blocks of color around it to make it bigger. Stay tuned. I have to live with this for a while before it tells me what it wants.

Migration

The lesson today was collage. Nancy suggested starting with a small (3" x 3" or so) piece of an old painting that has gone bad. Then put something over/across it. Then slip other things under it or along an edge. Etc. I have a whole bin of torn up paintings and other papers I've created with rice paper and paints specifically for collage. The painting scrap I started with is in the upper left. That suggested colors, and there's a reddish "bird" in its upper right so that suggested a theme. The other elements of the piece are papers I'd prepared for collage months ago and some waxed paper that was stained with liquid watercolors. I tried to obscure some of the edges of the individual elements by the way I placed other elements next to them. It's quite a puzzle, intuitive and very engrossing. The "birds" at the bottom right are cut out and just tacked on because I'd like to work on the shape of them more.

Bridge, Chimney Pots

I did this from last week's lesson and splashed color across my paper. For this one, I had in mind a sketch I'd done in Scotland, so I had some idea where I wanted the brown and where the green. Then I drew from my sketch over the dried paint. I started with a sepia conte crayon and when that wasn't enough, went to pastels. Nancy (the teacher) liked it a lot and told me to take a slide of it. That means she thinks it could be entered into a competition. She also suggested that I "float" the painting on a green mat and put a white mat around that. I've tried to show the floating in Photoshop.

I did this one today in our studio group. Some gesso here and there on the watercolor paper, then soft grays and greens with watercolor splashed over the whole paper. I had brought back from Scotland all the maps and brochures and tickets and stuff and I used those to collage over the painted surface. There's also some paper towel stained from mopping up paint, some waxed paper, also stained, from doing liquid watercolor textures and some pastel on paper towel! Everything is lightly tacked on with double sided, removable tape, so it may change completely before it's done. It's 21 x 14.

Fran has been working on this somewhat surreal painting for a couple of painting sessions now. It's watercolor paint on a gessoed surface. Then she added pastel for details, changes and highlights.

These are Amari (curled up on sofa) and Numa (smiling, blue background) our American Eskimo Dogs (Eskies). Numa, a male, is the older, by about a year and a half. They're not related, only the same breed. The paintings are by Jane.