A new Year, A new Attitude

The studio cleanout is over. 
FINALLY!!!
It took forever to go thru boxes and bookshelves of cut up paper! But it is done and at last I sit in a studio with some breathing room. The desktops are even visible.....Okay I lie. 2 of the desktops are visible. I think everything from both of those desks landed on the third one! C'mon! At least I have some surface to work with...
It's a lot like cleaning the kitchen. As soon as I get the dishes done, the counters clean, the floor swept I sit back and look at this gleaming area like a predator. Almost immediately I will want to bake bread, make cookies, or make a crazy intense spaghetti sauce or anything messy! I think my internal sense just can't stand empty areas. (right Steven? remember the encaustic class, with all that bark and stuff all over my table and surrounding tables and floor?)
In the studio it's the same deal! Whhooppee!! Beautiful empty Table tops  just begging to be messed up.
Here comes larger pieces of paper and all the watercolor gear! I can tell you the table is NOT clear this morning....
It's all good. It's a catalyst for big new work. I am excited again about my craft.

I am also dumbfounded.
After the watercolor gear came out, I attempted a collage work that has been wallowing in my brain for 2 weeks. I was surprised to find myself quite paralyzed! Where IS everything? My normal mode has been discontinued, disrupted and it's extinct.
I decided to do collage on top of the previously mentioned watercolor. I picked up some of the remaining ephemera I did keep and found a ladies face...I imagined her riding a glorious ice sled across the frozen creek in my watercolor. Cool, lets collage this.  I cut out the lady and placed her on the watercolor.
Snarl.
Time for change. I said to myself. I really want to raise the bar. I don't want to just cut out heads to paste. This is work.

Search Fearlessly: collage graffiti from the Dusty Loft, my former studio

I grabbed the watercolors again and began painting 4 little faces, modeling them on the ephemera lady I just found. One of them came out decent. I will cut and paste her and use her instead.
I have a problem with this tho. The texture of the watercolor paper for the background is the exact same texture as the lady face I just painted. When I cut her out and put her into the picture, well...she....just looks weird to me. I am a texture head!! I need to see a contrast. I think the answer is to laser copy and/or inkjet print these things of mine and use the duplicates. The laser will give me a sheen, and paper with no grain. The inkjet will allow me to fade it , or bleed it. Texture! I need texture!

This is one of the new problems I face as I try to generate more of my ephemera on my own and work to a new level. I really am a master of texture. With all this painting, it just seems lacking.

For now at least. In time, I may find new work flows, new techniques! How about monoprints? or silk screen patterns? or transfers.....?
Search Fearlessly.


I am ready to put 2010 and it's workflow to rest. What are you going to do this year?
Happy New Year, dear reader! I wish you a year of creativity. A year of new ideas, new techniques, new inspiration!
Let us ALL take our art to a new level and give the future some history to crow about!