365/2013 - Day 354

practicing the shirt

Today I had the "brilliant" idea to maybe avoid painting the young dog guy's shirt by cutting papers to color it instead.  I traced the shirt and sleeves (it is supposed to be sort of a baseball shirt style) and cut some practice papers to see a few different combinations.  

Oh -- and in the meantime while I was cutting the papers, Twink decided to "help" and was making me nuts so I gave him one of his catnip fish...he got a bit 'nipped.

All ready to get started on practicing with the papers.

Gah -- Twink wants to "help" -- he helps by rolling and rubbing and flipping around until he knocks something onto the floor and then acts all innocent and adorable.  Yeah.

I tossed him one of his catnip fish.

That worked -- now he is all 'nipped and wants no part of my papers!

The first sleeves - cut from the "wrong" side of some beautiful marbled paper.  I was thinking of this young dog guy being painted in light or pale blue...so I don't know if these sleeves will work, but they look good.

And a pale blue piece of mulberry paper for the body of the shirt.

Or how about the "right" side of the marbled paper -- no...too busy.

But I do like this pale blue paper -- it is like other papers already in the collage background, only it is blue.  It will definitely let the dots and other things show through.

But then again...how about a different "wrong" side of another sheet of marbled paper?  And an egg yolk yellow shirt part?

Maybe the other yellow is too strong...maybe just another layer of the same yellow from the background.

Or maybe the strong yellow underneath with the pale yellow on top -- I am pretty sure stuff will still show through like I want it to.  Decisions...decisions...

And later on in the evening I got busy cutting the last of the bodies for the Animal People...then I noticed it was already 11 so I stopped to come in here to post this blog entry before midnight.  There are only 3 images left to go!

I will cut those last three bodies out and then start thinking about the collage some more.  The papers will look different once they are put in place with the matte medium.  I wish there was a way to practice that before making my final choice.  Hmmm...

365/2013 - Day 352

finally committing to a collage guy



It took me an incredibly long time to find the first photos of this repurposed canvas, but here they are.  

Original painting from a Salvation Army store -- "before"...this was started back on December 23, 2012.

The first few pieces of art papers are applied.

The canvas and its new look -- wet.

The next time I played with the collage was around February 2 or 3 of this year and I found this dog.

Fast forward to now -- I can't believe it has been this long -- but tonight I finally tweaked this guy into a definite young dog guy.

The canvas as I first looked at it tonight.

I used Peggy's chalk trick to outline another image I saw.  It is hard to make it out, but unfocus a little and you can see the shapes within the white marks...it is like a dog woman looking downwards.

But no, the other dog fought to stay as the main character...but he needed tweaking.  Bigger circles around his eyes...change his neck, change his taller ear.  He was originally going to have a sort of pointy party hat but I couldn't see it any more.

After many changes --- ta-daaa -- here he is -- a young dog guy. 

I like him!