A Peak Inside my Portfolio: Assemblage Series Finished!

Again, another throwback to a much older post. I finished my assemblage series many months ago and even exhibited them since then! However I am just now getting around the writing the final post about them. It's summer's fault I swear! In my last post which you can find here, I showed the painting of the woman with the ribbon hair, now completely finished it looks like this: 

And this mixed media piece incorporating natural elements, which is finished:

I also worked on three other pieces during this class, they all incorporated fiber arts and natural materials. This first one is a comment on decisions involving love, specifically in my life, but my hope is that viewers will see there own choices and love reflected in this piece as well. 

In progress...

In progress...

In progress...

And finished product, please ignore the other piece in the corner, it was on display when I took the picture. The second of my pieces involved the idea of grief. I used a combination yarn, branches and wax. Sadly, I don't have a good image for this one!

The last piece I worked on was a bit of a culmination of the the whole series. I wanted to depict moments or frames of life and how each moment is a choice and the all connect together and create a 'tapestry' of my life and the choices made therein. As you will see, I went through a ton of steps and reconstructions to create the final piece.

Composition work...

Redo composition

And more composition change.

Finally starting on the final piece.

Got all the pieces on and decided I didn't like it... ripped them all off.

On the right track!

Continuing to work...

Final piece. Although it's not my favorite, I do feel like it communicated my idea successfully and was a good end to this class and series.

  

A Peak Inside My Portfolio: Assemblage Series

I'm currently enrolled in grad school and I have the pleasure of taking an assemblage and mixed media class this term. My favorite thing about a studio-heavy grad program is the guaranteed time to create each week. It's much easier to make that time when you literally have to do it. Also it's something that my coworkers and administrators understand. If I tell them I'm busy in the evenings because I'm finishing grad course work, they totally get it verses just saying I'm making art. Although my admins are pretty cool so that might be okay with that too!

In this class I'm creating some pieces that are going to be a part of a series about life and the choices I have made in life. My hope is that these pieces will speak as a metaphor for the choices and challenges that everyone faces in their lives and as a result, speak to their hearts. Here's a peak at what I've been working on....

Beginning with a pieced together canvas on stretched screen. 

Several of these pieces incorporate some fiber arts.

Beginning the painting

Attached to the canvas.

Creating the textured 'hair' element

This is where I currently am, although very close, it is not finished.

This next piece used both fiber art and some natural elements as well as some cool old piano keys, beads, buttons and random items from around my house.

Yarn wrapped over sticks and twigs

Attaching misc. items to canvas

It's a work in progress, my current goal is to do better at visually connecting the nature elements with the canvas background.

A Peak Inside my Protfolio: DIY bags and the continuation of Flight

Well, I know it's been awhile, but if you're one of my teaching friends, you know that the weeks before Christmas break are hectic. Especially at the high school level, we're busting a move to get everything ready for Scholastic's Competition. More on my student's work in a later post, however; this one is about some of the work I've been doing at home.

As some of you know, I was working on a series of paintings about flight, for my graduate painting class. You can read about the first three paintings in the series here. Since that post I have finished two more paintings. One on traditional canvas, and one on metal that I cut, sanded and riveted myself! I though it was important to immerse myself in the plane-making process to get a clear understanding of what I was depicting in my paintings. Let me tell you, riveting is hard! Here are some process pictures.

Here's the finished work, can I just say, that it's so much more powerful in person.

The piece of metal, is quite a bit different. My instructor has been pushing me to move away from technical, realistic painting. And although there is still some of that in this next piece, I do feel as if I've pushed myself. There was a lot of trial and error to get there though!

Here's the metal construction that I started with. I used sheet steel, tin snips, air compressor and rivets to put this all together.

This was my first image. And although I like it, it didn't go far enough for me.

So I thought, maybe I should add color... still not what I was looking for.

So then I sanded it down and added these shapes, which I hated. So I took it to class to get some feedback from my peers.

I just needed to refine the lines and shapes a bit more, so back to the sand paper.

Here's my finished piece. I still have some of the same lines and some color but it's more developed and I think they texture and sanded areas really bring a dimension to the piece.

Okay, okay. I know this post is going on and on, but I do have a DIY that I did this last week and some fiber art that I finally finished. That's right, the embroidered backpack is finally done. If you want to read about my long battle with the embroidery, you can read about it here. But here it is in all it's finished glory!

Of course I had to use it immediately as my purse! But I was concerned about all the various things I keep in my purse snagging on the thread on the inside. So, I just quickly made a lining panel for the front side. I also whipped up a cute little DIY pouch to keep all my junk in. I used this tutorial here and it was so super easy to follow!

Thanks for sticking with this post to the end. I love doing little projects and adding to my professional and personal portfolio with different techniques and skills. Hope you're inspired to add to yours!

A Peak Inside my Portfolio: Flight Series

My students are currently working on an assessment drawing of a still life and photo students are in the film developing stages. Although I was tempted to post some still life pictures, I know we all know how to lead a project like that and it's not a terribly new idea. So for times like this, I decided to have posts either about project I'm working on or artwork I'm creating. Hence the last post about my home decor and now this post about my current work!

I'm taking some graduate level courses and right now and I'm in the thick of a studio painting class. We are working very large scale which is awesome and sometimes intimidating. For these paintings, I wanted my inspiration to come from flight. If I haven't shared this yet, my husband is a pilot and we are currently building a plane in our garage. So flying and flight have a huge impact on my life right now.

When I began thinking about flight however, I wanted to stay away from the idea of clouds and wind and blue etc... I didn't want the theme to be immediately obvious or cliche. Then I started thinking about the plane, the only way that humans can fly. The only way that we can experience flight is through a metal box and metal wings, hard and unyielding, which is totally at odds with the open and and wind currents and clouds.

To that end, I chose to do a series of paintings of plane parts that my husband has been working on. Primarily in monochromatic color schemes. To keep the idea of flight apparent, since these pieces don't appear to be plane-like yet, I made the background very airy and cloud-ish.

I haven't actually finished any of them, but they're all awesome works in progress and I'm excited about this series.

Just finishing the background area of the first painting.

Here's my sketch of the basic shapes.

Blocking in darks and lights.

Refining...

And more... it's almost done, this is how far I am :)

Number 2, same process.

Pretty much finished I think...

Third piece, this is the only one that is for sure finished.