Betty Buttons

Well, here is my latest collage. I did this one last night, totally by accident. It's true, I wasn't planning to do art at all last night, as I was overstuffed and lazy from a gigantic burrito I had for dinner. All I felt capable of doing was sitting around and checking out everyone else's art blogs.

Somehow around 11 pm I happened to waddle downstairs to the studio, purely for the exercise of course, and within seconds I started fooling with a drawing I had made, and before I knew it, I had made this collage! I love it when happy accidents like that happen.

As you can see I have tried a different technique. It's not perfected yet, and now I wonder if I should have blended the background better. I keep trying to master the layering/blending background technique but so far I haven't figured it out. I think this is the closest I have come. The problem is if I were to blend the background better, it wouldn't be as colorful, and we all know how much I like my color. Oh well, I'll get around to trying it someday. If I'm brave enough.

So like I said, I used different techniques. For this painting, I did an acrylic wash of teal all over the canvas. Once that was dry, I started gluing random scraps of paper, magazine cutouts, ribbons etc. everywhere. For the first time ever I didn't think about what the images were! I didn't try to make them fit into any theme, I just grabbed and glued. Though, I did try to find scraps with my color theme, but that was it. It was so much fun!

Then when I thought there was enough junk on the page, I added the drawing of the girl, which I had already sketched and cut out. This is new. It never ever occurred to me before, to draw the subject on another piece of paper, cut them out and paste on top of the background.

I always would paint the subject and then piece the background pieces around it. It never really worked out the way I wanted and always looked choppy. Pasting the picture of the girl on later, was a much better idea.

I have to say I stole that idea from a few other artists, who I noticed did the same thing. It was like a light bulb went off above my head. I should try this! And I did, and I really like how it worked out. I'll definitely be doing this more in the future.

After she was pasted and painted, I dabbed a little lime green paint around (my attempt at blending), sewed on embellishments and viola! Betty Buttons (husband named her)- not to be confused with belly buttons which is what I keep seeing every time I look at the title,- was born!