More experiments with animals and birds

I'm having fun combining photos of wildlife with collaged backgrounds!

Experimenting

I saw a painting of a shorebird with rectangles of black and white behind it, with some text and spirals in the color fields. That got me to thinking about how I could work with color fields behind a silhouetted bird. So I laid down some metallic gold paper with some blue ledger paper and cut out a great blue heron photo to lay over those. I photographed the composition and then added some white "spatters" and a white line between the colors in Photoshop. I ran filters on the image and printed out three versions to cut into strips. I built my artwork by combining those strips of paper with some of the original ledger paper and handmade papers. I then made a second composition using the same metallic paper, a star chart from a 1919 book and a cut out barred owl. In the final artwork I added in some of the gold metallic paper, script from an 1868 household expense book and some handmade papers. Lots of ideas for future compositions are building in my head....

The first two photos show the compositions I photographed and the second show the resulting 12" x 12" artworks.

Back in the Studio

After being away (in warm Arizona and Florida), I'm back in my art studio. I'd printed out and cut the prints for this piece in January as I wanted to try put pieces of blue ledger paper (from the 1850s) into all the blue sky in this artwork. I was anxious to get back to finish this piece and I'm pleased with the result. Some of the handwriting is readable and says "New Orleans" "Savannah" "loose cotton" -- the ledger was from Suffolk Manufacturing Company, a cotton textile business -- so I've named the piece "Southern Exposure". In addition to the photo prints and ledger paper, I've used some handmade yellow paper and colored pencil in this mixed media piece. 12" x 12"

Two April Artworks

These were two pieces I made at the end of April. The cardinal piece is called "Checking out the Neighborhood" and is a 12" x 12" piece that includes additions of ledger paper and pieces of paperbark birch. The lake artwork is called "Early Morning Flight" and includes additions of blue ledger paper, vintage US postage stamps and a grassy handmade paper. (I heard geese that morning but they were too far away to photograph. In this artwork, I digitally moved a squadron of geese into the scene from another photo.)

Water Lily Series

I took a lot of photos of water lilies when we were in Florida, so I decided to make a series of art pieces. These are called Dragonfly Dream #1 - 3. All have handmade green papers in the lily pads, blue ledger paper from 1858 in the water, and shredded U.S. currency "floating" among the pads. (available for purchase on my website lorireedart.com)