Work: Journal pages
Music: Assorted Leonard Cohen and Applemusic radio using a Cohen song as the “base” for the songs it chose
Yesterday I had a day completely “alone” because DH has been away for work for two nights. In my upstairs studio I was working on some journal pages. I had added some paper to them, but still felt they needed more to be “finished.” These were pages on which I had done initial backgrounds, and then added cut/ torn paper and deli paper I had mono-printed with acrylic paint (using a gelatin plate) with patterns or colors. I felt that college layer still needed to be integrated with the background to make it feel like a unified creation and not just a few types of paper glued together. To integrate them I used acrylic paint to shade pieces to create depth and add color intensity. I also added some pieces cut from a magazine to the first of these three (the white dots on blue).
I think this is finished, except perhaps a coat of varnish. It might be named Levels. I think the bottom layer was the yellow dots applied using a stencil.
I went through a stack of (mostly home decor) magazines and was cutting out words which I save in a box for future art use. I also was looking for finishing touches for this piece. I cut these from an advertisement for bedding, and so they have angles from the graphic bedcover on the bed going over the edge that really accent the illusion of depth. I knew as soon as I set one “stripe” of dots on the surface that it would be a perfect accent.
The other two pieces I feel are still waiting for their “finishing” touches. I may need to start a folder of pieces from magazines with texture and pattern on them–I felt like I was finding good examples that I could use almost like paint. They were not objects to cut out, but stripes, or dots, or feathers from which I could cut shapes. I left them in the magazines for now, and I guess need to decide if it would behoove me to start a folder of them, or if I should just leave them to find again next time I page through magazines for collage material.
Unfinished. Bottom later was the I think teal blue on the white journal page, “stamping” using a plastic sink protector coated with acrylic paint using a brayer. White interlocking circles are monoprint with gelatin pad on deli paper, using a different sink protector for the pattern.
Unfinished. Bottom layer either acrylic wash or watercolor, then white ink applied with a string dipped in the ink and dragged around. Plum paper is a layered gelatin print, and orange is thin deli paper, also gelatin printed. Adding shading to the plum and orange papers makes them seem in places that they are behind the blue paper, but it actually is a whole page in a mixed media notebook.
Karla Thomas Solomon, artist 