prismacolor pencils on old paper covered with matte gel medium - approx. 3" x 4 1/2"

not long after i did the piece in the last post, i started making cards by gluing down pieces of old paper to pages from 'the merry men'. i've been drawing and painting/coloring on them since.

blank card before i draw on it

i love the idea of cards - i have for a long time, but have never found my way to making ones that i like. a few months ago i saw - and fell in love with - the collages of tom moglu on tumblr, and, long story short, my construction idea for these cards began to form.

below are a couple of example's of tom's work...

Hêtre by Tom Moglu

Soloré by Tom Moglu ~ 180x180mm

he has another tumblr called the bread quilt, and that's where i found this interview with him. here's his answer to question # 6, "can you describe your process?"

"Sift through huge pile of scraps of paper, hack a few large pieces about and glue them down as a ‘background’, drink coffee, find more pieces to shape the composition, cut and glue, destroy/obliterate non-working parts, cut, glue… repeat for hours."

the interview's worth reading...

thank you, tom...

XO

untitled ~ thread, watercolors and casein paint glued to a page from 'now we are six' by a.a. milne - approx. 5" x 7"

i first stitched and painted the figure on a page from 'the merry men', then i tore the page out of the book, and finally i tore the figure out of the page! the page from 'now we are six' had been beside my art table for months, and when i laid the pieces on top of it so i could clean off my workspace, i knew they'd found their final home.

for now i'm going to work outside of 'the merry men'. thinking of working inside it just stops me cold, so that's that. if you've worked in books you know this happens. in the past i have forced myself to carry on in a book that i no longer want to work in, but it's not pleasant. and i have way too many pages left in 'the merry men' to even think about doing that (not to mention that i'm just about incapable of forcing myself to do something, especially if the muse is in opposition to it), so outside the book it is for now.

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i watched this video in september and the journals in it spoke to me on a very deep level. you probably know how it feels when you see someone's work and all of the sudden what you're doing seems ridiculously insubstantial; well that's how the art in leigh mc closkey's 'codex tor' series affected me. there are links here to the art in two of the 'codex tor' books - once you click on a page, click on the expansion thingie in the lower right corner and the image will get huge.

and so yeah, onward...

Flying Lotus - Inside the Codex: the Art of Cosmogramma

XO

'maud' ~ watercolors and oil pastels in 'the merry men'

i don't think we should try to pull the wool over maud's eyes... i don't think it would work one bit. ; )


i was going to stitch maud on a page from 'the merry men', but the paper was too fragile and wouldn't hold the stitching. so i took the thread out of the machine and kept going. then she had a perforated edge so i could tear her out and glue her to another page. the page on the left is the one i tore her out of. the paper's darker because i put walnut ink on it first.

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expertenough.com

XO

'eunice' ~ casein paint, watercolors, thread, embroidery floss and seed beads on painted muslin

eunice is an experiment with thread, paint and beads. it's a combination that's been calling to me for a while but i've been waiting for it to sort of firm up. well, it hasn't firmed up, so i decided to just mess around with it. i especially like her lips, which i stitched with embroidery floss and then painted. the stitching really gave them some nice texture and depth.

unfinished pages in pocket moleskine - flowers colored with prismacolor pencils and an 8B pencil

i was going to put eunice in 'the merry men', but then i remembered some 4" x 6" frames in my closet, so i put her in one of those. that's her in the pogo print on the right. the left page is me drawing with my right (dominant) hand, i think - i can't remember... i just don't think i could've drawn anything that symmetrical with my left hand!


prismacolor pencils and 8B pencil in pocket moleskine

some pale, quiet girls... drawing them is kinda like putting on quiet music... ; )

XO

'enid moves on' ~ watercolors, casein paint, gouache, oil pastels, colored pencils & beeswax in 'the merry men'

so i did take a chill pill, ha! and our son was here visiting for a few days... i started this early in the week and finished it at the end. i'm not totally happy with it, but enough to leave it alone...


in case you're interested, this is what the wax looks like before i smooth it out with a quilting iron. i like using a quilting iron more than a heat gun because i have more control over where the wax goes.


i also painted on top of the wax - the tubes are some of the paints i used (ignore the soft pastels in the box - the picture just looked better without them cropped out). if you click the top pic you can see most of the places where i painted on the wax. also i used some oil pastels on it - i put the stick of caran d'ache turquoise in the pic because it was one of the colors i used.

i still feel like some new thing is brewing art-wise, and maybe i'm getting closer to it.... two people whose art is inspiring me now are: ani at 8 1/2 x 11: thread reading and marti somers (click on 'galleries' at the top of the page). total love for what these women do!

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neil young ~ photo by henry diltz

happy birthday to one of my favorite people... 66 today!

XO

'eileen' ~ watercolors, gouache, casein paint, 8B pencil and oil pastels in 'the merry men'

it's taking me a long time to paint faces these days. following my one-thing-leads-to-another approach has me putting down a lot of paint that later gets wiped off or painted over. way more than usual. so i work on a piece for a few hours and then walk away from it. wait for the energy to come back 'round. it's not the easiest way to paint, that's for sure. it begins to feel like work instead of play, and for me that's a big 'ol message to chill. wait 'til things get clearer... which eileen looks like she might be doing, lol!

pogo prints, 8B pencil and primacolor pencils in pocket moleskine

so i mess around in my moleskine more. look at flowers in the dover book 'traditional floral designs and motifs', draw them, and then color them in. i love to color... i've often thought that all i really need is a (very cool) coloring book.

patrice with wax paper over her in 'the merry men'

a couple of people asked about patrice and the beeswax... yeah i did cover the entire page with beeswax, and then i took an awl and carved into the wax so i could put black casein paint in there - that's what the black outline is.

this time instead of spraying the page with PYM II as a way to 'fix' the wax, i just put a piece of wax paper over her. doing a lot of wax pages in the milton book (last summer), i ended up feeling that you really have to start taking extra care of the book once you do it. no leaving the book outside in the sun (which i did with the milton book many times), and no laying it under the woodstove to make pages dry faster - stuff like that. otherwise it seems fine to put wax on the pages...


this is what 'the merry men' looks like now. i haven't taken out many pages, but it looks like i'm going to have to start taking out more. just putting the bits of wallpaper on the pages adds bulk, and the wax pages really do.

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“The hidden harmony is better than the obvious."

~ Pablo Picasso, via tumblr

XO

'patrice' ~ casein paint, watercolors, gouache, 8B pencil, oil pastels and beeswax in 'the merry men'

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carsten schmidt photography

XO