Tag: Technique: Crayon

Frustrated (with Addendum)

~ Liz A ~ 9 Comments

Working in this new-to-me medium of collage, I’m frustrated by not having the skill set needed to realize what is in my mind (deep deep sigh).

Okay, first off, yesterday’s crayoning was a trial of mixing Filana beeswax blocks onto a map of where I grew up on Long Island. The cotton-candy idealization of the inset (I lived in Mineola and East Williston until I went away to college), the fall foliage of “upstate” (because there was Long Island, the city, and then everything else), and the blue-green sea, from Jones Beach to the Peconic Bay and beyond …

So yeah, that was fun.

Then my mind went dark, thinking of the turmoil in the Middle East. I pondered Acey’s prompt, considering the recursive nature of our incautious interventions, from the Desert Storm of 1991 to the second Iraq War in 2003 to the current-day insanity in Iran. Wondering how to “draw a line” that expressed that and then populate it with images.

Everything I wanted to use was online, including the newspaper clipping of a young girl that I couldn’t find in my paper stash, but that popped up with a single Google search …

I printed out a letter to the editor of the Daily Press that I wrote in 2003, the photo of families fleeing Iraq that prompted the letter, the eerie green flashes of the 1991 Desert Storm, and the flaming remnants of Suleimani’s assassination at the hands of our government.

The frustration came as I tried to put it all together, slicing apart the letter and interweaving it with the images and some “Persian” graphics from my book of decorative ornaments. It wasn’t pretty. So I slogged through and then wussed out by copying and cropping it …

Along the way, images and ideas got left on the cutting room floor …

It simply got to the point where I said, “I’m done with it” …

I think I need the reassurance of stitch … yes.

Addendum (January 11)

I tore out the copied image and glued down the original collage in its place …

And then moved on …

Essentially

~ Liz A ~ 20 Comments

Wednesday is house cleaning day, so I found myself rushing #crayonuary30 … settling for just coloring in the counties we’ve driven through or to in our travels through Oklahoma for the past ten years while trying out yet another new set of crayons …

You’ll notice it doesn’t look much like Oklahoma … the panhandle being noticeably absent. But much as Grace encountered yesterday, I’m having a bit of trouble fitting stuff onto the page. Ah well …

I didn’t do more than copy Acey’s Prompt #7:

Reverse yesterday’s prompt.  Find a collage piece that expresses the essential you perfectly.

Use it in a way that speaks to an important part of yourself that has rarely/never been included in the way you’ve used this type of image in the past.

Then I got to work cleaning the kitchen and bathrooms while letting the prompt work its magic in my mind. After lunch and a minor water leak occasioned by my failure to properly secure the washing machine drain trap (serves me right for being too fastidious), I finally started pulling collage stuff together.

My sister-in-law had recently sent some things from my parents’ former home: a watercolor portrait of my grandmother, seen here with the christening gown that she, my mom, my daughters and I all wore …

Then there was a photo of my family at Wade’s Beach on Shelter Island in 1964 (I’m the squinty 8-year-old who would soon thereafter be diagnosed with myopia) and a 1937 National Geographic about Colonial Williamsburg, where I worked for two decades …

Diane also sent some counted cross stitch pieces that I did in my twenties, including this one of the Geddy House in CW … the poor thing was mounted in Masonite, smashed against glass and then glued into a frame …

Casting about for one last essential thing, I pulled out this almost done family sampler and started putting my HP printer/copier/scanner to work …

Following Acey’s prompt was easy since I’ve never copied and used any of my stitching in a collage before, but what was really new to me was putting together so many disparate elements into a coherent whole …

And once I did, it turned out to be too large for the journal …

But as you can see peeking behind the original, my HP also has a reduce/enlarge function …

Another day in the book …

Lost in it

~ Liz A ~ 12 Comments

Here’s today’s challenge pairing, to be followed with what is sure to be a long-ish post …

But first, a look at the finds from the first walk in our new-to-us neighborhood park …

Some familiar, some not … starting upper left with mistletoe, and continuing clockwise, lichen, hackberries(?), seed pod of unknown origin, pecan, Osage orange (aka bois d’arc, aka hedge apple), and dried fruit from what I hope is native western soapberry, but might be invasive chinaberry (will have to wait for springtime leaves to determine).

Truly, I can’t walk without combing … filling my hands with wonder.

Anyway, on to today’s challenges. Yesterday older daughter Meg gifted us with some Faber Castell Gelato sticks, which paired beautifully with one of my current reads …

They can be used as crayons, but can also be applied with water and brush …

Having just read Marti’s comment on Acey’s blog, I was taken by her image with its bit of new-to-me artist Judy Chicago …

Wanting to play on a map grid that would be purely structural, I chose Poland, with its unfamiliar place names, then started painting in the blocks with different colors …

Until I saw it … the dreaded familiar word … place actually … and found myself painting in the color of iron …

Honestly, I just couldn’t help myself.

Then I was on to Acey’s Day 6 prompt:

Okay, so this, with colors that I love, but a somewhat intense composition …

Besides which, I’m not a huge fan of figural forms, so I dug out this used book find and started tearing out strips of like-colored stuff …

at which point things got a little crazy (and totally off-prompt), so I’ll give you the abridged version …

which ended up totally too big to put in my journal, so I copied it on my handy-dandy printer/scanner/copier and only then re-read the prompt and realized how far off I went …

Oh well, what’s done is done … which brings me back to where I started …