First Stencil

I'm done thinking about fabric now and I am back to considering collage, back where I left off a while ago with my Dorje on Gray piece consisting of a mandala of quarter-dots. Playing around today in photoshop I decided to go back to basic shapes and make my own colorforms. This quickly led to a quarter-dot array that I decided to use as a mask over a photo. Then I randomly applied effects to overcome a poor photo choice. I really need to play around more with this concept.

And I must admit I love that "target" brush even more than the "Spiral" one!

Cross No. 70 with Dots

Here's another new cross. I was working in a smaller format than usual, 4.75x4.75 inch square, which is greeting card size. I have some beautiful heavy Italian folded greeting card stock called Medioevalis by Fabriano which I have been hording.

The orange "wings" were added to fill up the corners of the square, and they create an interesting shape for repeating.

I added some dots in photoshop and then inverted the design to get the darker version.

Fabric Design - Filter Tangent

Yesterday I spent some time exploring the Filters available in Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0. I used a scan of a log cabin design that I created by pasting together little squares of fabric. I repeated and rotated the image to form a block

to which I applied various Filters at random. The examples below illustrate application of the Artistic filter called Cutout. (I've used this one before on my Perfect Square design.) Different results can be achieved through the manipulation of three variables: levels, edge simplicity, and edge fidelity.

Below is an example of another Artistic filter called Plastic Wrap:

And this next one is Posterization:

I've lost track of how I achieved the last one, but here are a few more surface treatments I can still identify:

Then there are applications which dramatically distort the image, affecting more than just the surface character of the design

like Ripple (above) or Pinch (below). The possibilities are endless!

AnitaNH Designs at Spoonflower

I have just opened a Spoonflower fabric shop! I have been talking about using my drawings as fabric designs for a while and I finally got the ball rolling. I have added a couple of designs just to see how the system works. I have to order a swatch of each of the designs to proof them before they can be offered for sale. 15 designs printed at once are much more cost effective than one at a time so I need to work up more designs. You can check my progress here:

Icon With Le Parc Dots

Here's one from the Archive of Indecision. It's on cradled plywood so I've had it hanging on the wall just by the doorway where I walk into the kitchen, and every time I walked by I felt slightly annoyed because I hadn't solved it yet. So today I took it off the wall and placed it on the library table. Suddenly these dots started jumping on!

The sharp white corners at the top pointing toward her head were bothering me. I knew the purple paint was trouble the moment I started putting it on over two years ago. I think if I get rid of some of the white lines I may be happier.

Now that little red dot on the left is pissing me off. I need to punch out two more small purple ones if I can find more of that paper. . .

I really like the way the pink thai unryu looks over the shadowy areas.

I Don't Know Why

I really like this for some reason.

In Progress On Grid

Here's a work in progress utilizing some of the marking pen dots shown in a previous post. The grid was created with black acrylic paint and masking tape.

In Progress For Emily

I have recently blogged about the experience of loneliness over on The Temporary Blog, having been inspired by a marvelous book by Clarke E. Moustakas. Check out The Best Books Are Thin and Loneliness: Part 2 to read some passages from this inspiring book.

To me, the most important premise of the book is that the condition known as existential loneliness leads directly to creative expression. Moustakas uses the secluded life of poet Emily Dickinson as an example, and reading about her reminded me of this lovely triptych which has been languishing in my Archive of Indecision. It may be time to dust it off and move forward with it!

Pen Dots

I have been making dots with marking pens to print for a collage based on this tribute to Julio Le Parc. I'm thinking it would be interesting to make one on black. On a 30x30 canvas maybe. The tribute to Le Parc is 20x20 so bigger might be fun. Must locate black paint.

Wow, here's a cool discovery. I've been using this gridded paper for presentations with 2" squares. You can blacken each square individually by hitting it with the paint bucket. This could get interesting.

Whispering In the Closet

The Art Group will be showing new work at the Gafney Library during the month of February. This is good. I have a definite deadline for the work in progress. That said, I have spent the day so far exploring tangents, one in particular.

I wanted to title this post: "A Collage Artist and Former Librarian Considers ETEWAF (Everything That Ever Was--Available Forever)" but it was too long. I credit the blog Retrospace for starting me off in this direction. The idea of having access to every book ever written is a librarian's dream. And what collage artist wouldn't like to have access to every image that ever was, printed with indelible ink on acid-free paper?

But, reading further in Wired Magazine and Inhabitatio Dei, I began to ask myself if this ETEWAF phenomenon is really such a good thing. The comments on the Inhabitatio Dei post were instructive, leading me to consider the book Dialectic of Enlightenment by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, the chapter titled "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" in particular.

And if all of that didn't give me enough to think about, I also stumbled upon a summary of Walter Benjamin's essay titled "The Work of Art in The Age of Mechanical Reproduction." Does making use of found images in collage result in the loss of "aura" that Benjamin discusses?

Time will tell. Bottom line is I have four works in progress for the February show and damn little progress has been made so far today!

Day Off

Spent the day reading, shoveling snow, eating leftover Christmas goodies, and making a mess on the library table.

Bluebeard

The first in the series of myth and fairy tale collages will be one titled Bluebeard. I re-discovered some old photos of my batik wall hangings just recently! The back of the photo above is dated July 1982.

As soon as I read the part about bluebeard in Women Who Run With the Wolves, I realized who the piece has been about all this time. For the new collage version I envision lots of icy blue with wintery white snowflake dots! As luck would have it, I've managed to hold on to a half dozen of my original drawings for the batiks. The May 2010 studio shot below shows the Bluebeard drawing just above the step stool. And there's the Blanche drawing just under the word "natural."

Women Who Run With The Wolves

I'm reading a very inspiring book by Clarissa Pinkola Estes titled Women Who Run With the Wolves; Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype. (For more of my recent reads see: The Link Between Books and Sanity on The Temporary Blog.) From it I am gaining inspiration for a new series of collages based on myths and fairy tales. The series begins with a number of drawings done back in 1980-1982 for batik. I've already made extensive use of one of the drawings for my Blanche collages.

As an interesting aside, I found two old pages from an old book of nursery rhymes in my book on the Centennial Exhibition by Sandhurst. I guess the time is ripe for the fairy tale theme!

Contemplating the Quarter Dot

I have been meditating on what has become my favorite collage: After Le Parc (Theme No. 1). On my collage web site it can be found linked from the Tributes & Inspirations page. I moved it physically from the gallery into my bedroom a while ago. It looks fabulous in half-light! The white divisions between the quarter dots keep the eye in kinetic motion which is in keeping with the art of Julio Le Parc upon who's work the piece is based.

I have been thinking about doing other versions of the same dots on different background colors. Black, gray and yellow are three that come to mind. I'd also like to change the color scheme of the dots themselves. The digital quilt version below seems less pleasing to me than I originally hoped, due to the imposition of the dark area which was caused by my casting a shadow when I photographed the work.


I have explored the quarter dot theme in two other pieces: a poster for the Gafney Library fundraiser in 2009, and a small acrylic painting on thai unryu.

Flatland No. 1

Now that I have my new Nikon Coolpix camera (thanks to the miracle of credit card miles!) I've been trying it out by catching up on some collage and shop photos. Here's the first of what will be a series of four 12x12 inch collages based on crossed squares. The original spark was the discovery of a book titled Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions which you can view on the Internet Archive.

The gray background is Thai unryu tissue over #5 black "stringth" which is a popular bead stringing material. I used a couple of leftover face quarters from my Zinc Pennies project. The suggestion is that of a rolling or flipping television image. The substrate is canvas board.

Blotted Cross How-To and More Warhol

I was able to achieve the "blotted line" effect using Photoshop. My original sketch was in red Sharpie marker on a yellow lined tablet. (Does this depend on the color red to achieve the effect? I need to check that aspect out. . .)

Starting with a .jpg file I went to Image, then Mode and selected Grayscale.

And then, again under Mode, I converted the image to Bitmap (Input Resolution 72 pixels/inch; Output Resolution 1200 pixels/inch; Method use 50% threshold). The result is a .psd file which I resized to 600 pixels wide and then saved as a .gif.

Then, using the brush tool set to white, I cleaned up the background, preserving the cross design. (Note to self: straighten up the image in the first step while it is still in .jpg format because you can't do it once the image is in Bitmap!).

I need to experiment further to see what happens with different Resolution and Threshold settings.

Recently I've been noticing other blog posts related to Andy Warhol. My friend Jim at Dull Tool Dim Bulb links a coloring book published by Pittsburgh's H. J. Heinz Company to Warhol's Heinz Tomato Ketchup drawing.

And Mike over at Unremitting Failure published a great self-portrait in the style of Warhol's Marilyn Monroe portraits.

Andy Warhol and That Beautiful Blotted Line!

It's the end of June already. To a certain extent I feel like I'm clawing my way through limbo. I don't have any finished collages to show for it but there are new possibilities on the horizon. I've been watching an amazing documentary from Netflix: Andy Warhol from the American Masters Series. Aside from learning about the politics behind trends in art, I have finally become aware of the importance of Andy Warhol's work.

Funny thing how growing up with it I just took the work for granted and never even saw it, really, let alone realized its implications. All that marvelous repetition! Can you imagine what he would have done had he access to Photoshop?

So now I am in love with that beautiful "blotted line." I even found instruction on how it is done. The possibilities for collage are astounding to me. And I keep watching the documentary over and over (should I admit, obsessively--Andy would have liked that) because every time I do I pick up on something new.

The blog called Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast has an interview in which children's illustrator Edwin Fotheringham elaborates on his use of the blotted line and it's digital translation via Photoshop using a "Wacom Cintiq" which Fotheringham describes as "essentially a flat panel monitor that acts as a pressure sensitive tablet, with stylus input."