sketching with graph paper

 Oh man... last night's session in the studio was exhilarating. I knew the various graph papers would be fun to work with. I decided to do what I love to do... experiment and explore (even though I have a bit of  "problematic" piece that I should tackle and finish). These photos only show a subset of the combinations I tried. The man and woman shown here, will be transferred onto the graph paper at some point (I think); as will the infant skull (so weird). And I LOVE the geometric abstract sketch.

All of these sketches are "works-in-progess" and may or may not come to fruition. I am just excited that the graph paper has turned to be as stimulating as I had hoped. Stay tuned for what becomes of these ideas!

The impact of subtle changes

Whilst experimenting/exploring this evening, I considered these two versions of a combination of elements. Hat under; hat over. Interesting difference...

Not as subtle as expected.

Beginning of a new year

Well, I didn't do an "end-of-the-year" reflection post, but I will briefly say that 2024 was a great year for me, artistically-speaking. Although I was very disappointed not to be accepted to the National Collage Society annual juried show, I had a wildly successful solo exhibit at The Other Side (Utica, NY) and our collab exhibit at the Kirkland Arts Center (Clinton, NY), as well as the Art Expo at 4 Elements Studio (as I had posted). Sold a bunch of work; so now am excited to work on getting my "inventory" replenished. For this post, I thought I would re-cap my art week. I just returned last night, from a trip to see the Egon Schiele exhibit at the Neue Gallery in New York City. Schiele is one of my all-time favorite artists! The exhibit did not disappoint. Wow... beautiful paintings, drawings and sketches! Photography was not allowed (but I would encourage anyone to look-up his work on the web). This is a photo of me in front of a beautiful Klimt painting at the gallery...

On my way back from NYC, I stopped by The Black Gryphon (owned and operated by my friend and fellow collage artist Anthony Morgan) to see pieces from our KAC collab exhibit, now on display at the restaurant.

And... I was thinking about making a separate post for this (I keep track of the annual count of my posts ;-), but I will include it in this pot pourri post...

I was SO excited last week, before I departed for NYC, to find these gems in a dumpster at school! Yes, packages (multiples!) of various graph papers! Only a collagist (and perhaps some nerdy engineers) would get so excited about graph paper ;-). And I have enough to share with Toeny too! I already have some ideas about how I will use these elements.

And to Dust You Shall Return

Here is the finished piece (11" x 14"; 16" x 20" framed)...

I am contemplating using the "marred" frame. I think it adds character to the piece.

Video about emergence of collage

 Hmmm... I searched and was unable to find a post where I shared this video (although there is a long text about it back in 2022... when the piece was made). I think this video is instructive/helpful for those thinking about how composition emerge. So, I will post now.

Transfer update

Well, I am pretty pleased with how the chemical structure transfers ended-up; BUT, the human body transfer images are getting lost a bit on the cratered lunar surface -- I think because the lines were not "thick" enough (too little "weight"). And as I am completing the finished work (which is larger than usual), I'm finding that the lines aren't really visible in photos of the work (I will share the completed image probably tomorrow), but can be seen when viewing the composition live. The subtly is compelling, I think; but it will be difficult to submit a photo for exhibit consideration.

Transfer considerations

So, I won't bore you with completed collages of the sketches I posted previously (although there will be a "dump" coming soon). But, I wanted to comment a little on a technical aspect of an up-coming piece, involving transfers. I'm excited about putting some chemical structure transfers on the piece. When using such a transfer, however, you should keep in mind that the transfers typically come out in reverse -- so if there are "C"s (for carbon), or "S"s (sulphur) or "P"s (phosphorous) in the chemical structure, the letters will be backward. So I perused pages of chemical structures to find ones with "O"s (oxygen) and "H"s only (although I think "N"s (nitrogen) would be 'pull-off-able'). I also found a couple that had "C"s, but that could be trimmed to omit them. Anyway, here are some example pages of what I was looking through...

Details that most people are unaware of, in the process of making cool collages.