A flock

I got all of my deadlines met by Wednesday noon this week, so I turned my attention to making more bird collages. With my friend's permission, I made two pieces that were variations on ones she'd recently purchased from me (goldfinches and white-crowned sparrows). Then I made a 10"-square collage using a vintage illustration of a field sparrow's nest, an 11"x14" using an altered Audubon warbler illustration, and a 9"x12" monarch butterfly collage from a photo my friend Sheila took. I'd like to make another 24" x 24" since it had such impact... but am feeling a pull to make a few more landscapes for the Plains and Planes exhibit and a couple more plants of the plains to go with these birds of the plains... stay tuned.

More birds of the plains

Over the last few months I'd made four in the "Mise-en-scène" series with birds of the plains for our November exhibit... and then sold three of them to a friend who is getting married and moving into a new home! So, I'm making some more, altering Audubon illustrations and setting a new stage for them. In this one, I took Audubon's Marsh Wrens illustration and modified it digitally, added some vintage grass illustrations to each side of the nest, ran out color laser prints, tore and pieced the image together on a painted canvas, then layered up art papers and dried grasses. The grasses come around the two sides and I have "Marsh Wrens" in script along the bottom right edge, so I added the bug on the top edge for that wren on the branch to be flying after.

Inspiring new work space

This is my new studio space and I LOVE it! We just replaced the 1959 windows in our living room and office, and we decided to switch the room functions while we were at it. We put our graphic design desks/ computers into the former living room and moved my collage desk and drawing board in, too. Now we have a big creative studio for graphics and art (which puts me closer to my computer and color printer when working on fine art, too!) Big plus -- I now have a great view of our backyard while creating instead of looking up at white closet doors!! It's going to be a very inspiring space for my work. Note, there are also plenty of dog beds for my Sheltie furkids....

Combo

In this piece, I decided to take my new technique – of printing out an altered photo and cutting it into rectangles to piece together with other alterations of the same photo – and add some acrylic paint, grassy papers and pine needles to the marshy area in the foreground. My hubby is going to make a nice cedar frame for it. I really loved walking along this lake in Montana and liked the photo I'd taken of the scene; I'm really happy with how this 24" x 18" mixed media piece captures a sense of Dailey Lake in Paradise Valley.

The finished landscape of rectangles

Here's how the new landscape turned out. I like how some of the rectangles stand out and seem to advance while others recede. I added some acrylic paint to the field and grassy area but wasn't very bold with it -- partly because I didn't want to draw too much attention to that area since this image seems to be about the clouds and how they dwarf the buildings ... and partly because I'm way out of my comfort zone when painting!!

New idea

Sometimes the littlest thing will inspire a big idea. Looking at the sky of a collage in an art book, it occurred to me that I could make a collage by cutting a photo into rectangles. I printed out three versions of a photo (all with different art filters applied to them) and have been building the art, kind of like a puzzle. The top photo shows the 24"x12" canvas with a couple prints on the drawing board that I've been cutting sections out of; the lower photo shows a detail of the piece. I may add acrylic paint to the foreground, too... stay tuned!

More plants of the prairies and plains

I made two more plant studies this past weekend, but we've had such a FULL week that we didn't get them photographed until today! I used a different technique of tearing and layering on these that I think will work well for larger pieces, too. On the big bluestem grass collage, I added some actual dry grass at the bottom, too. I have ideas for more plant collages, the bird series, and some new mountain ones... I'm going to have to pick one tomorrow and run with it!!