2012/365 - Day 4 - Animal People collages part 2

working with magazines and catalogs

I wanted to say a few things about the images I use in the Animal People collages.

The majority of the images come from not-exactly-new magazines and catalogs. Some I get in the mail and they are new, some come from various office waiting rooms and have been handled quite a bit.

Some are several years old, some have thin paper pages, and some have heavier paper pages with very crisp, clean images.

Sometimes the images get folded in their storage drawers by accident...corners curl up. Sometimes a piece gets torn slightly but I like the image enough to still use it.

Sometimes there are printing imperfections and sometimes you can see each little dot of color, sometimes the images are crystal clear.

That used to bother me a lot but I have learned to relax more about it. I have always wanted my Art-o-mat customers to be happy with their purchase. I have made a lot of these collages over the span of several years but I have only had a handful of so-so comments regarding the quality of the piece. Most of the time the comments I hear are that the Animal People remind the new owner of a pet or a friend or relative or co-worker.

I guess I just want to say that I put a lot of time and work into each hand cut paper collage. I try very hard not to let any glaring mistakes slip by me. It takes a long time to match heads to bodies and get the proportions right and get some expression or personality to come through the unrelated images. I hope that people will be pleased with their new $5 piece of art.

Here are Animal People numbers six through ten (of fifty):

365 Day 42

LOTS of progress today!














The day started off with picking up 55 magazines from my wonderful dentist's office -- wow! Denise was glad to weed out their magazines and I was thrilled to bring them home. I promise to recycle whatever I don't use.














When Juana and I were at Green's Art Supplies yesterday, we looked at a lot of their art paper. They had some of the same papers I have at home including two of my favorites.

Today I decided to use the paper I have instead of just looking at it.












I had another canvas that was set aside "for later". This one was once a sort of birthday card I received a long time ago and it had lots of beads and glitter and puff paints on a black background. It was an appreciated and thoughtful gift at the time, but it had outlived the greeting many times over so I decided to repurpose it.













I also got out one of the jars of matte medium that I have never used before. Ever. Had it forever, never tried it. I originally bought it for use in collage because I read you can use it in place of glue.













I think it is turning out pretty cool already. The canvas is textured with the paper itself and the remaining beads and puff paint under the paper. The orange stripes are not as visible anymore because of the black paint underneath, but it looks pretty darn cool. I have no idea where I am going to go with this yet, I am just happy to have finally tried the matte medium. I think I will let the paper tell me what to do.

The other paper -- my absolute favorite -- the green with black rectangles pattern -- is now a part of the ghost on the right. And it is also part of the mouth of the ghost on the left, the ghost who is made up of a bit of everything on the canvas.














I really enjoyed tearing the paper. I would normally have cut it with scissors in the shape of the ghost, but I am fighting my comfort zone(s) with this canvas.


















I really love all the layers of color that are developing.














I love how the paper is almost like a mask around his eyes.














And here is the mouth of the ghost on the left.



















AND -- I am very excited about this...my friend and I were able to coordinate some time for him to come by this evening and look at my plans for my submissions for the Come Play With Me show. He thinks that it will be a quick thing for him to put the wood parts together for me. He took some of the parts home and will get started on them and I will go and get some of the other parts tomorrow morning and we will meet up again tomorrow and get rolling! Now I have to get to work on the toy parts!!!