Someday Her Prince Will Come

This is one I finished last night. A little something different. She is another sketch I drew, and then pasted onto the finished collage.

Now this character started out on sketch paper, and then was glued to watercolor paper. Originally I was going to make my own book filled with characters like this. Diamond Lady was also one.

But, I can't seem to stay away from using canvas. And while she looked pretty and really cool on her watercolor journal page, I couldn't help but wonder what she would look like in a collage. The problem was I like the idea of making a book, and the journal page looked really good. But I think I may not have the patience to do it. I like to see results pretty quickly, and the book would take me forever to do. Hmmm...still it sounds like fun.

Anyhoo, I made the background on the canvas thinking there is no harm in doing that. I didn't have to put the picture on it after all.

I started out slopping on some gesso and heavy gel, like I usually do, but I stopped mid swipe with the palette knife, and thought, hmm I wonder what it would be like if I tried to duplicate the journal page? So I left the blobs of gesso and gel where they were and started experimenting with stamped and designed tissue paper.

Oh my goodness, I found a new friend. I love tissue paper for collages!! Especially the ones I stamped, so many new possibilities there.

I eventually ended up smearing around the blobs of goo, and added paint, and well the whole thing just took off from there. Tons of fun to make, and I need to sit my butt down and draw another character, so I can do more of these collages.

On a side note, I will never use watercolor paper in collage again. I could not for anything get it to glue down. Not only that, it was two pages glued together so it was extra thick. It was so hard to rip from the journal page. I actually tried setting it on fire, but the darn stuff wouldn't even burn! Ugh.

Pumpkin Surprise!

I know it's not even October yet, but I've been in the Halloween spirit, for about a month now, so I thought I've give the fall season a little kick start with this collage.

I found the pumpkin image on Flickr, and I'm almost positive it was from Suzie Q. She has a lot of good vintage Halloween pics for using in art, so I'm pretty sure it was her. If it wasn't I'm really sorry. Sometimes I download so many pictures at once, and occasionally get the owners mixed up.

This piece is an 11x14 collage on canvas. I have to admit, I really like this one, and surprisingly it has become a favorite of my family. Usually my collages look better in person, because they are filled with sparkles, embellishments, etc, but this piece looks awesome as a print. I love it!

My grandfather has been taking professional pictures of all my artwork, and he prints out copies of each one, well this one looks so darn cool, if I ever get my Etsy site up and running, I'm selling it for sure.

Oh yeah, and before I completely forget -though I can't see how I would really, as I can't stop smiling for the last 24 hours- is that I actually made it into a local gallery!! I'm so excited with myself for actually following through on something and making this happen. The show goes for 1 month, and who knows someone might actually buy and or like my work, and if I never get shown in a gallery again, at least I knew I did it once. Whooo hooo!!

Diamond Lady

Well! Here is something completely different. This is the one I was talking about the other day. I drew the girl on sketch paper, colored her in with colored pencil, pen, paint and glitter,and then added her to the painting/collage at the end. I love her hair!

It came out totally different than what I was going for, but I'm still happy with the results.

I tried doing tons of texture in the background, and the houses were scrapped out of gesso in the first layer.

I liked the result, but as I was wrapping up dinner in tin foil, I noticed how lovely and silver it was, and wouldn't that look good in my collage! So I made the houses out of it. Fun!

The only thing I'm really bummed about on this piece is the lips, which I assure you, looked good until I put that string gel over it, and the ink from the pen ran. Ooops!

I'm finishing another one today, which came out pretty cool too. My new favorite tool, is stamped tissue paper, love it!!

Dreamy

I made Dreamy about a month ago. This started out as a problem child, but I'm really warming up to it now. I think it turned out alright after all. It certainly was a challenge color wise!

This canvas is 11x14, and the image is from Lisa Kettell. Now I'm not sure how it looks on your computer screens, but on mine, the colors seem off. I assure you it's really bright in real life, as are all my collages. :)

Oh, and thanks for those of you who posted helpful comments to my gel dilemma. I'm still trying to figure out what went wrong, it has me so perplexed because the product worked so well, until last week.

I think now I'll try some of the products you guys use, just so I don't have a repeat offense, it has ruined two collages now.

On another note, I made a collage last night, that is totally different from what I normally do. I've been creating little characters and drawing them on sketch paper, then placing them in my painting. It came out pretty cool I think, I even used tin foil in it! Hopefully it will be dry soon, and I can post a picture of it soon. I hope to make more of them, and eventually learn to draw the character and do the background all in one piece.

Beautiful Dreamer

I did this one so long ago! It's another 5x7 with images by Itkupilli. I'm a little bummed as the image is somewhat cloudy from the gel I put on, I think it mixed with white paint, so It didn't dry completely clear.

Speaking of that gel, I'm totally dumbfounded right now. I can't figure this out. I've been using string gel by Liquitex to cover my collages from day one. I've always had beautiful results.

Until now.

The other day, I decided to to do a second coat of gel on one of the collages I just finished. Well I went downstairs to collect it the next day and the image was gone!!! I'm not kidding it completely disappeared. In it's place were a bunch of cracked lines.

The only thing I could think of was that the second coat must have somehow messed with the inks. So I used it again on a collage I finished yesterday, only using one coat. It did the same thing!! But only on half. See, that particular collage I had printed two pages of inchies, and it only ruined one of the pages.

So naturally, I thought it was the paper. I had used different papers to print the images, and maybe that was the issue. To experiment I took one of each paper, printed out an image and coated it with the string gel. I let it dry overnight and guess what?

Nothing happened!!! The pictures are perfect. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!! I don't know what to do now. It was such a good product, it sealed everything, enhanced the colors and dried perfectly clear, but now I'm afraid to use it for fear of ruining even more collages.

Has anyone ever had this happen to them, or do you know of any good varnishes/sealers, that don't ruin your photos??

Sassy!

Oh my goodness, I've got so many collages to show you all, that I can't seem to keep up. I've done five more in the last couple days too which doesn't help matters.

Sassy I did so long ago, and I really like this one, though it started out a bit rough. I know you won't believe this, but the image is not by Itkupilli. Did I just hear a gasp?

Well as shocking as this may seem, it's actually by Lisa Kettell, and if you don't know about her yet, you have to check her stuff out. It is so much fun to look around her magical faerie world. Plus she has this awesome set of images on flickr to use for free in your artwork . I think you have to friend her first, but believe me when you see her art, you will want to.

Anyhoo, I'm off to go finish some more pieces, I'm totally on a roll right now. OH yeah and I just signed up for one of Monica Zuniga's classes over at her Hands and Heart Ning site. I'm super excited about this, she's another artist to check out if you don't know who she is yet.

Now, I'm off to paint!

Oooh La La!

Time for a new collage! And no it's not the purple disaster I've been talking about. I can't post that yet, because I've somehow lost my brush that I use for applying the string gel to my collages as a final touch. I can't figure out where it went, but I do have my suspects. One furry black one in particular.

Anyway today I will go on a massive hunt for it, and hopefully be able to coat that darn picture, so I can show you all what I've been complaining about for the past two weeks.

Anyhoo, this collage to my left is titled Oooh La La, and I really like how this one came out. Somehow it all seemed to come together so perfectly to me. I really liked playing with this color palate. Lots of fun.

She is another 5x7, and yes the main image is from Itkupilli. One of these days I'm going to shock everybody and do one without one of her pictures. In fact I might do it today, because the Halloween bug has hit me, and I may not be able to contain myself once I get down to my studio.

With that in mind, I'm off to paint!

Dancing Girls

One of my latest creations. I actually have about 10 or so that are done and hanging on walls, that need to be photographed so I can upload them to the blog and Flickr. I feel so behind, but at the same time I have plenty of material to post about.

Anyway Dancing Girls is an 8x24 mixed media on canvas, with images provided by the lovely Itkupilli. One of these days, I'll have to use someone else's pictures, but right now I can't get enough of her stuff.

This one was a challenge, as I'm not used to this size canvas, nor did I have a lot of supplies in the right colors. As you can see, I had to seriously improvise with the glass rocks at the top and bottom of the canvas. I didn't have anything else that would look good there. However, that isn't necessarily a bad thing, because it forces me to stretch my creative boundaries, which is something I need to do on a frequent basis.

In other news I finally finished the purple disaster which turned out not to be that purple. Feeew! It didn't come out that great, but I think it's okay. It just needs a layer of string gel and it will be ready for photographing. In fact I think I'll post it next just to see what other people think of it. Maybe I'm crazy, but it is one of my least favorites right now.

Alright I'm off to have dinner and read me some Somerset magazine. Have a good night everyone!

La Vie En Rose

Collage number 5! It's a 5x7 mixed media collage on canvas. Another lovely image from Itkupilli.

This is the one that I rubbed the face off of while trying to wipe paint off. I had to wait until my new printer ink came, so I could print another photo and finish it.

Finally here she is, in all her pink and brown glory. I do like this one a lot. It's weird to for me not to make it all bright and colorful, but it's also a challenge to explore new color combos. So it all works out good. I can't make ultrabright rainbow collages all the time right?

So I'm still working on my purple disaster. In fact I haven't really touched it since that first night, but I did make a run to Michael's today and grabbed some new purple paints and a few other lovely items, so maybe I'll be able to finish it this weekend.

In other news, I set up a new art station upstairs in my writing room. I'm beyond excited about this, because truthfully, I really don't like going downstairs to the real studio. I have a very nice space set up there, and it does look out on some beautiful nature, but I can't stand the mustiness. It stinks to high heaven, of dirt and mold. Our house is on stilts on a mountain side, so part of the downstairs is underground and all I can say is peee ew!

Originally I wanted to set up the whole shebang upstairs in my little room. I measured everything, and though a very tight squeeze, it all would fit. When I told the Mr. about this new plan, he was somewhat bent of out shape. You see he likes to be able to do art together (this is some dream of his) , and we have desks that sit side by side. He likes the fact that we go and create together, and feels that if I move upstairs that would be too much separation.

It's pretty sweet, but I still don't like going down there much. So I compromised. I kept all major stuff, for painting and collage making downstairs, and upstairs I moved an old art desk and very minimal supplies. I plan to use this space mostly for art journaling, drawing and stamping. Stuff that wouldn't be too crazy messy, but I can still go to, and create if I/we don't feel like breathing mold spores. Plus it's close to the kitchen. Never a bad thing.