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!!

Amazing Week

I had quite a "glow" going all last week. A friend told me she and her fiance wanted to buy the large goldfinch collage for their new home ... our Open Studios event was fun and I sold a dozen works ... I found out that "my" gallery in Montana had sold two of my collages (bringing the total to FOUR in two months!) and the owner asked me to send more work out ... so we wrapped and shipped six more collages off on Friday ... we had friends and their friends from the Chicago suburbs come by for drinks and studio tours before we all went out to dinner on Saturday, and they came back Sunday and purchased a large collage of mine and made a 50% deposit on an alabaster sculpture of Rob's!! (That particular sculpture is going to a national juried show this weekend, so we'll settle up with the purchaser when the show is over and the stone is back in our possession.) Oh, and I made some collages over the weekend, too! The one above is the first of several I hope to make for our November show depicting plants of the plains and/or prairies. We picked and photographed some Queen Anne's Lace and I found a 1913 illustration of the plant that I placed over a cloud photograph. Input on this piece would be welcomed before I go onto more plants.... thanks!