Sunday, November 14, 2010



STARTING FROM THE BACKGROUND TO THE FOREGROUND

I'm an avid magazine collector. I don't have time to read all of them, so they tend to pile up. We'll be moving in a few months, so I've been trying to downsize a bit. I've started going through the magazines and cutting out pictures that I like. The plan is to use them in my own art, maybe do some image transfers and collage. Collage is very challenging for me. I don't quite "get it". I tend to focus on the foreground and forget about the background. I really need to create a lot of different backgrounds so I'll be ready to make the collages. This morning I was looking at some old watercolor paintings that I did on one of my art retreats in Ocean Grove.

The painting was good enough but I felt it was a little muddy in the middle, which took away from the vibrancy of the fall color palette. I thought about my art teacher telling us that when we create a painting and we don't like it, rather than discarding it, consider it "not finished". There are many options for recreating a painting from a mistake. So I decided to experiment with the one I had.

I looked through my collection of fall images that have been accumulating from the old magazines. I kept adding images to the painting, trimming them to fit the image in the painting.  This is the "almost finished" new painting. All that is left is finishing it off with some self-leveling acrylic gel medium.

Title: Harvest Wreath
Materials: Watercolor on watercolor paper, acrylic soft gel, recycled magazine pictures

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