Posts Tagged ‘new art work’

Mixed media stitched collage featuring an original photograph, vintage dish towel, handmade collage stitched heart, embroidered fabric and some kind of weird vintage trim that is pleated vinyl. Along the left side is some commercial fabric and wool embroidery yarn. AFter stitching the whole thing was dunked into leftover morning coffee. I call this mannaquin “little girl lost” because that is what I always think when I see her and I’ve used her several times already in various pieces. I found her at the fabulous ARTpool Gallery, where Moi is having a show in September 2012 as the featured artist. Just found out that news on Friday.

The second piece in the series of stitched mixed media textiles. This one uses a scrapbook paper altered with spray ink and a gold seal with a birdcage stamped on it. Embellishments include an old handwritten sermon fragment, wedding dress applique, lace panel and linen, the foundation being a plaid napkin. The series of four are now hanging at the fabulous ARTpool Gallery in St. Pete, on repurposed wooden hangers.

I got a wild hair about six months ago to make some salt dough and play around with it. Great fun! Totally non toxic and no worry about fumes as it cooks or any of that stuff that comes along with other clays. Plus, it cooks benignly in your kitchen oven, although the cooking time for ornaments is very long (around 10+ hours at a low temp) and not conducive to Florida in the summer. However, that is the only drawback I can see to it. This ornament was a thickish slab of clay, hand formed and then hand stamped with a deeply etched rubber stamp. After the baking and cooling, I glazed it with brown umber acrylic paint which I wiped off and left in the impression so it would show up against the neutral colored clay. I strung all my ornaments of various sizes onto a handmade bamboo branch armature, sort of abacus style, with the addition of only small commercially made ceramic beads. Very primitive.

This page doesn’t photograph all that great but if you look at the larger image by clicking on the smaller one you can see some detail better. There are three stampings of my styrofoam plate image of Guadalupe that I carved several months ago, all these stampings are in blue. And then there are three stampings in black of a rubber stamp that I have of Guadalupe. The background is tempera paint and the styrofoam plate stamps are tempera, too. Tempera is one of my favorite paints to use in art journaling. It dries matte which I like. It dries more quickly than acrylic, which I like. The paints mix well, which I like because the color range is somewhat limited. It’s non toxic and non stinky, which I like. In summation, I LIKE it. It’s inexpensive, too, which I REALLY like. Try it. My go to if I am not trying to prep a surface is white tempera which dries semi-opaque in one coat, opaque in two, much quicker than gesso and much more reasonably priced. Just about every page in my altered map journal begins with white tempera paint.

The star of this necklace is the gorgeous hand cast bronze petroglyph pendant by Nancy Young which I purchased from her probably around 1995 or so. The large beads are charoite, the purple cylinder beads are lepidolite and the chips and buttons are ameythst. I do not know at the moment what the yellow-green faceted bead is but I hope to find out. The two charms were found earrings. I am a huge fan of Nancy Young’s work and wish I had bought more of her castings when she sold them to the public because I believe now she produces them only for her own use. They are gorgeous work.

The most recent in my silhouette series on 12″ canvas. Free spirit out for a night on the town. This was a fashion magazine ad originally, cut out with a craft knife, painted with black gesso and matte medium to place it on top of the acrylic and gesso background. There was also an edge of scrapbooking paper still showing on the left side. This canvas was repurposed from one of my previous paintings. If stuff is around here long enough and I no longer feel it I have no problem painting over it. Enjoy your day!

I drew/doodled this page in one sitting most likely while watching something on TV. I was playing around with drawing with fountain pens, something I’ve not done unless you count doodling in high school during steno class. But now we are going into the waaaaayyyyy baaaaaccckkkk and I can hardly tell for sure WHAT happened in high school. I know steno is long gone. Anyway, I have several fountain pens, one that eeks out a little ink here and there so it makes a nice scratchy drawing (I believe most of the angel was done with that pen). The other real fountain pen delivers a very nice inking on demand and is likely responsible for lettering and text in this doodle. The color is some cheapy disposable fountain pens I bought a long time ago that – shock – still work. Every now and then I get in the mood to work like this. I’ll start off with one drawing and begin to turn the page and change the orientation as I go along. That way, the page has some interest. It’s a very stream of consciousness process and all kinds of bibs and bobs turn up in there. Try it one day while watching TV or when on the phone for a long time. Lots of times, I don’t even remember drawing most of the stuff. This page was rediscovered as I was sorting through some journals…I had forgotten I’d even drawn it.

I don’t believe I ever posted the cover of my altered map book journal. The cover is a heavy laminated cardstock. I attached this photo of a doorway in an alley in St. Pete, collaged with a different photo most likely inverted in Photoshop. I believe I used the polarize setting on the door photo to give it the shimmery blue/green color. I love to take and look at photos of doorways, doors and windows. It’s interesting to imagine what is on the other side.

Graffiti inspired background with magazine cut out silhouettes and white gel pen journaling. It’s not easy finding magazine images with the proper bold character for these mixed media pieces. So far fashion magazines are the best yield. Guess what? After 70+ postings on this blog, nearly each day (except for Saturdays usually) since late December, I am running out of completed art. Don’t turn that dial yet, though, still have a few things up my sleeve and goodness knows  I won’t run out of photos anytime soon, but I know you like variety, or at least I suspect you do. What’s a girl to do? Make more? Well, I guess I could, as evidenced by the last few days but we’ll have to see…

The roly poly guy I drew in the upper right corner on black is in direct contrast to the long tall shadow dude featured in yesterdays entry. These are facing pages in my journal. The color scheme and background texture technique carried thru but the artwork is all handdrawn on a black surface. I like using postage stamps as a background. The little perferated edges produce a good texture when glued to the page and painted over. There are also office supplies on it and randomly cut shapes. Paint was applied with a credit card to get a streakiness I like. Won’t be any journaling added to this page because I like it the way it is and in combination with the facing page.