365/2013 - Day 109

a main character emerges from the layers of paper

Tonight I have been studying the repurposed watercolor portrait that I covered with papers and matte medium.  Here is the very wet collage in a photo from last night.

Here is the dry(er) collage tonight -- with images starting to come to the surface.

This is the strongest creature so far and I really like how she is looking.  I love her stance and position on the collage.

I can see a few other faint images in the background and to the left of her.  I am not sure what she is about yet or who else will join her...but I am looking forward to finding out.

And here is an update on the hatchling creature -- Leann was right...he does look kind of neat with the pink and green paper.  I might have to rethink how I approach finishing him.  The paper has made his surface nice and smooth -- it feels really good to touch.

365/2013 - Day 108

well...

...that was kind of sort of someplace in between cleansing/therapeutic/healing.  I feel so much lighter and relaxed now.  (Re-reading this post I know it is an awkward paragraph and a little hard to follow...but I think I should leave it like it is.)

Over the last few months I have come to realize just how much resentment I have been holding onto over a portrait that someone did of me a long time ago.  I felt pretty manipulated and then obligated to purchase the portrait.  While it was fun (at the moment) when the show opened I always felt uneasy about the whole process but I went along with it because of what was going on at the time.  I have been moving the painting around on my walls, getting it farther and farther out of my direct view and then I finally took it down a couple of weeks ago.  Then I was doing the every-time-I-walk-by-it-in-my-studio thing and then the whole thing came to a head today and I decided tonight to repurpose it.

I really dislike this type of metal frame, too

of course the glass broke -- I was being SO careful but the whole assembly was under such tension that the slightest movement snapped the glass -- and it is thick glass -- and when I was trying to bust it up afterwards with the hammer (with the two pieces of broken glass inside of a plastic bag, inside of a paper bag, positioned over a contractor's trash bag)  it just didn't want to break -- I had to really smash it -- that felt really satisfying

I always liked the colors

and I worked the papers and matte medium really well and got everything very "wet" -- you can still see the colors through the paper layers

these were a couple of phrases from an old children's storybook that were left over from the last repurpsed canvas

and you can still see some of the painting through the papers

I wonder how it will look when it dries