This week was more stressful than some, and it reflects in the letter I sent to Hannah. Playing with foam stamps and collaged paper made with mono prints pulled from a gelli plate. Then drawing on top of everything with posca pens
Letter, week of October 10
Still playing with foam stamps that I am carving and mono printing. The writing on these letters is on the back.
Letters, week of September 12
I’m continuing to work every night on mixed media and am then incorporating my experimentation in to letters. Here are some letters that I mailed the week of September 12 – 17. I was playing with foam and linoleum stamps that I carved, and paper collaged from mono prints that I pulled with a gelli plate. The writing is on the back.
Letters, Week of September 5
Two of our children are in art school. Our son, Gordon, is attending both Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design in a dual degree program. Hannah, our middle child, is a painting major at Syracuse College of Visual and Performing Arts. Gordon is very much of his generation, on his phone more often than not, and very comfortable in the digital world. Hannah is a traditionalist. She does not believe in holding a phone while having a conversation with someone, and she loves to get letters in the mail. She has been pining for a pen pal. I decided that my exploration of mixed media would be the perfect opportunity to create letters to send to my children. Since I started, only Hannah has written me back, and she composes beautifully illustrated letters, so she has become the primary recipient of my snail mail endeavors. I am going to start posting some of my letters on this blog, since some weeks, working on letters every night is the only visually creative activity that I am doing.
One of these letters is just doodled on. The other is using a combination of a linoleum stamp that I created, and collaged mono prints pulled with a gelli plate and acrylic paints. Most of the letter writing is done on the backs, but where it is on the front, I’ve blurred it.
Mixed media collage, March 11, 2015
Mixed Media Collage, March 4, 2015
8.5 x 11 inches
mixed media on paper
Mixed Media Collage, March 3, 2015
I printed out my abstract drawing of the woman writing and then painted, drew and collaged over it with other drawings that I drew and printed. It will take lots of practice to learn this new medium. I stopped experimenting with this one last night.
Mixed Media Collage, March 1, 2015
Today was Sunday. I gave myself permission to ignore my web design work today, and draw instead. Here is more experimenting with cutting up drawings and collaging them together, adding paint and pen, working from my imagination. This is 8.5 x 11 inches.
Here is another that I played with last night, a variation of a previous collage that started with the same base drawing.
Explorations, my stay-cation
This week is spring break for the island schools, and my husband and son are up North skiing. I stayed home with the dogs to work. However, part of me decided since it was vacation week, I would take a break from my daily sketches and start experimenting with collage and mixed media at night, a vacation from my usual routine.
I had some sketches that I’d printed out when I was first learning how to use my printer, and they did not print right. I decided to see what would happen if I applied collage techniques and painted back in to them.
It was a struggle and a mess. For example, I tried applying masking tape to mask the edges and keep them clean, but the tape stuck and tore at the paper, so I ended up painting the edges as well. I pasted one drawing on top of the other, but didn’t line them up correctly and it stuck on skewed. With no idea what I was doing, I doodled on the piece with pen, painted into it with acrylics, added charcoal pencil, and pasted cut up sketches on it.
Each time I put a mark on the piece, it ended up not at all as I’d intended, one accident after another. Fingers sticky from glue and paint, I experimented and finally filled it to capacity.
Last night (and today) I worked on a piece entirely from my imagination. I drew wall paper patterns and layered them in the drawing, added an abstract figure reading, added some crows, and then printed the drawing and pasted, painted and drew back over it.
My visual vocabulary is so very different when I’m not trying to draw what I see, but rather am just putting marks on a canvas. The disparity bothers me. I hope if I keep experimenting and working at it that a more unified voice will emerge.
I want to keep exploring this direction of expression – so I’m extending my stay-cation past the spring break week, and am looking forward to more accidents, surprises and challenges.