Rajkamari राजकुमारी and Yoo-hoo!

Rajkamari राजकुमारी

Yoo-hoo!

The two works are small 4 x 5 inches but pack a big punch!.  Basically I have three layers in both of them.  Rajkamari means princess in Hindi.  Yoo-hoo! came from an article in a garden magazine.  The woman is a nosy neighbor. Isn't there one in all neighborhoods.  Remember Mrs. Kravatz from Bewitched?  I have completed ten new works and I will upload them over the next several days.

Butterfly

Butterfly

I am in a round robin group of five. The signature that Butterfly is in belongs to a good friend on Whidbey Island. We are exchanging our journals each month and we will add our traveling signature with one that was made in a recent art class.  In my case, I plan on a third signature to be bound with the other two.  I already have an idea for the cover for this new journal.  I found a Boy Scout buckle in a free pile at a garage sale and  I also found some plywood shreds on a beach which I want to treat with a white wash for the cover.  I will post the result sometime during the winter when all is done.

Coq en Grèce

Coq en Grèce

This chicken just seems so proud to me.  Perhaps there is an egg laying around nearby?

This collage is very simple.  Simple seems to work.  It is just four different photos.  The background is CitraSolv National Geographic and the others are from a variety of other magazines.  I cut out the background for the archway before adding the Greek church. Done!

Tuscan Chicken

Tuscan Chicken

I have Ziploc bag after Ziploc bag of ephemera, so much so that I do not know what I have anymore.  I get surprises each time I open one of the bags.  There are undoubtedly thousands of more collages just waiting to be created out of those bags.  So Tuscan Chicken came to be.  It is the fifth in the series I just finished last Friday.  Another chicken made a debut.  It seems that chickens are appearing in quite a few of my collages.  That is funny because I never really have been around them much except when I was very young.

My earliest memory of chickens, at around age three, isn't actually chickens at all.  It is of the chicken house and my father repairing the roof.  I wanted his attention and he was ignoring me.  Now mind you my father was prone to swearing and I had paid attention to his preponderance.  I said, "You S.O.B, get down off that roof right now.  I need you."  He did get down off that roof immediately and began chasing me.  I was saved by my mother who years later told me that he had brought my swearing on himself....something about role models! :-)

The Keeper

The Keeper

This is the fourth montage in a group of six completed last weekend.  Creating compositions using disparate ephemera takes some time.  I agonized over each of the montages.  It was such a different process from the 5 minute collages.  With those you don't have time to worry or to try too many things out.  The sky for this piece is a page from National Geographic that has had CitraSol painted on it.

I especially loved the cracked dried mud that I found.  I had to piece two  pieces together to get the mud just right.  Thanks to the elephant for covering the seam.  I like the way the gentleman leads my eye off the page to complete the collage.  The dots help to move the eye to the right as well. 

Lost or Panic?

Lost or Panic?

 

I absolutely love the look on this chicken's face.  Is it a startled look, a look of panic or one of being lost?  Personifying the thought to what might be behind the look is up to you.  For me, the chicken and the old Chevy ( I think it is a Chevy) are both so out of place in this environment.  That is what makes this piece so intriguing to me.  The Chevy might not be so out of place if it were on the road, but it is not, it is bouncing along the arid environ.  Is there a remote farmhouse near by and the chicken has free range?  That is what is so exciting about narrative collage, you get to decide the story.

Literary Friends

Literary Friends

Does anyone know these famous authors?  This is the second piece from the Randel Plowman class.  We used a process of adhering with gloss medium with varnish.  The works in this project are all 7 inches by 6 inches.  I have learned a lot about magazine page quality on this project.  Not all magazine papers are easy to work with.  National Geographic, Martha Stewart Living, Architectural  Digest, and Vanity Fair use higher quality paper.  Southern Living has much thinner quality.  Hence the thinner paper is somewhat transparent.  You will notice this at the top right of Literary Friends.  

answer: 

renkluaf mailliw dna ytlew arodue

Chickens on Vacation

Chickens on Vacation

As I have mentioned I am taking an online class with Randel Plowman and this montage is the first in a series of six for week two project 2.  I really got into this project and my house is a testament to that.  It is a disaster zone.  I have magazines everywhere.  There are snippets of cut paper and piles to take care up.   

We used gloss medium with varnish to adhere each of the collaged pieces.  The process is messy and time consuming.  My fingers stuck to everything.  Thank goodness for Goo Be Gone!

I attempted to place a chicken in all six pieces but that did not happen as you will see in the next few days.

Bionic

Bionic

Bionic is another in the Crazy Guy series which began months ago.  When I saw the "glasses" in a magazine I just had to find a place for them.  The "glasses" were in a different form but I rearranged them for this piece. 

5 minute collages

     



I am taking a Randel Plowman online collage class.  Our first assignment was to create a series of 5 minute collages.  Here are my results. The size of each one is 3" x 5".  On each one the time limit is 5 minutes.  To prepare, have a pile of images ready and waiting.

Country Outing

Country Outing

I worked on this last signature piece for my barn series for almost a week and it is finally ready for mailing to Ingrid in Sweden.  This piece really gave me problems right up to the bitter end.  I had to problem solve all the way through it, but I actually really like how all the problems turned into something that helped the piece.  First the background was way too bold for any of the barns I had in mind.  I decided I had to add to the background and in doing so created even more of a problem.  I liked what I had done but it still was not ready for any barns. 

Since I was actually working in Ingrid's signature I had to do this right.  Somehow something had to work before I would even think of sending it to her.  I wanted to add "crazy guys" to the piece and that in itself created more of a problem.  For days I anguished over how to fit a barn in with what I was laying out in the signature.  I liked what I had but no barn would work.

This morning I thought about Where's Waldo.  If you don't know this children book, each page has about 100 people and Waldo is hidden somewhere in the illustration.  It is the job of the reader to find Waldo.  So I thought why not hide the barn and it is the job of the viewer to find the barn.  Hint:  Not all of the barn is visible to you.  Another hint, if you have been viewing my series on barns for awhile, the barn has appeared in a previous work.  I rather like how the final outcome of  a hidden barn came to be.  I sure hope Ingrid like it when she receives it.

Villainous

Villainous

This is the third in the September ATC series.  What trouble is this guy in or up to?  I don't think I want to cross paths with him.  It has been commented on that much of my work since the end of July has been dark.  Dark, not necessarily, because of the choice of colors, but dark in nature, the subject and the way the total composition comes across.  Hmm!

I particularly like this piece.  We have been watching a lot of MI-5, a British television show.  So perhaps the themes of this show are coming through.

Pensive

Pensive



This is the second in my series of September ATCs for my gentlemen's group.  Do you think he is in love?  He certainly is lost in thought.  

Worry

Worry

#4 (not posted in order) in the September ATC series.  The forehead wrinkles tell a story as do his eyes.  He is way too serious about something, perhaps life!  Maybe he needs to do more of a favorite activity.  For some reason he reminds me of a Vincent van Gogh's self-portrait.

Sid and Blue

Sid and Blue

My barn series continues with An Apple for Your Thoughts.  I love personification.  It was a concept I always taught my elementary aged students as it is so prevalent in children's literature.  My absolute favorite children's book is Charlotte's Web.  Like Charlotte and Wilbur, this horse and bird must certainly be friends hence their familiarity.  Don't you just know that the horse can hardly wait to chomp down on that delicious looking red apple!  I just love the endless narratives that can come from a completed work.  So perhaps Sid, the horse, and Blue, the bird conjure something in your heart and mind.