phase 6 - another new collage

An art-active week (very, very!)

I made this lovely Harlequin collage:

Commedia dell'arte 1 - Harlequin, 28 x 22," mixed media collage, 2015 

it took a few tries to settle on the rat as the animal familiar for this one, but on the upside, I now
have two birds and a squirrel ready to jump into some future piece ;)

The mask is from last week's new face block printed in white ink on black, cut down, sprayed with black with drawing in white.

Harlequin isn't alone, he's just a little farther along. I thought it was time to try something with more interaction/ narrative, so this is part of a set of three, the classic Commedia triangle - Harlequin, Columbine, and Pierrot.

Work in progress. Photographing as they develop to get a sense of the whole...

baby steps! :)

The first part of the week went to arranging framing for an existing piece, an application, and a submission, so it was Wednesday by the time these got rolling. To streamline working through a lot of decisions quickly, I used a sort of algorithm:

- decide the materials and scale (22 x 28" is these largest size possible from a single sheet of this paper that fits a standard size frame)

The collar, sleeves, hat, are vine charcoal and color pencil on paper.

- paint the backgrounds doing them at the same time helps them match.) These are pretty minimalist to provide some visual relief.
- print and complete the heads. I do this to ensure that there's plenty of time because its both the most important and most difficult part.
I printed the blocks, cut them out, then sprayed over them with white gesso and drew on top of that.
- decide on the other components
- research/ make as necessary
-assemble (and re-assemble, and re-re-assemble)




Something new I'm trying with these to get more narrative possibilities from each block - I carved new eyes and collaged them. This way, Harlequin and Pierrot can be mirror imaged repetitions with variations of one another.

printed from one block onto another and
then drew on it with pen

the block  reminds me of the eyes of Dr. Eckleburg, and it
sort of looks like the classic Great Gatsby cover, designed by by Francis Cugat
 doesn't it?

 Moving the eyes a few millimeters is a small change, but it makes a big difference:

 

With the new eye block collaged on top for the head of Pierrot, before paint/ drawing

I'm having a lot of fun with the costumes - so much potential for drapery and different patterns! Maurice Sand's Masques et bouffons (comédie italienne) and Jacques Callot's Balli di Sfessania have been especially inspiring.

Working on these, I've been a bit of an art-hermit; fortunately the feline assistants have been keeping me company.

Jr. has decided that she fits just fine on my lap while I sit on the floor
with the drawing board.

The ultimate fluffy white collar

Admittedly, this is based on my experience and not research, but I feel like after many hours of close up, detail work, getting outside and photographing seems to help my eyes re-calibrate so I don't loose depth perception, so I also spent some time photographing this week.

A funny theme emerged - it looks like everywhere I went, all I saw was red.





 And more nature...

and because I wouldn't want to exclude,
this is an old photo of my other favorite tree ;)
 

one of my favorite trees -
even though it's very old,
I was relieved to see that it survived the winter