Encaustic Day 3, still having fun...

...but I have to admit, I'm a wee bit frustrated, too.  The learning curve is climbing.  I would sure love a workshop right about now!

The first thing I did was 'fix' my Dream piece from yesterday.  I could see that the balance wasn't right as soon as I posted it so here are the before and after.

This next piece is a mixed media collage.  It's not the piece I started out doing.  The gummy heap of wax from that effort is set aside for another day.  For this one  I used music, end paper from an old book, pressed flowers, handmade papers and a tjap impressed into the wax.  I coloured the incised lines with oil stick and wiped away the excess.  Clear encaustic medium was used on each  layer.

I can already see some changes I'd like to make but not today and maybe not at all.  We'll see.

Playing with Fire

I am learning very quickly that encaustic is not an easy medium to master.  But it sure is exciting!  These two very different pieces each started out as sunsets.  They each changed direction dramatically after about 5 minutes.

Encaustic Collage ACEO - 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" - Dousing the Flame

Encaustic collage 8x10 on cradled board - Dream

Sunshine Challenge

This is my piece for the Mix it Up with Melange "Sunshine" challenge.  You don't have to be a member of the Melange team to participate.

IT'S SPRING! 

This mixed media collage ACEO (2.5 x 3.5") is made using a clear tar gel photo transfer over a piece of a music sheet and then painted with chromacolour paints.  Black pigment ink is brushed around the edges and a final coat of clear tar gel covers the piece.

I'm so inspired!

I just returned from an inspiring collage workshop given by Nick Bantock at his gallery, The Forgetting Room, in Ganges, BC on Salt Spring Island.   An added bonus for the workshop participants was the opportunity to view a large selection of Nick's artwork as he was in the midst of selecting and arranging work for a show at The Denver Museum of Outdoor Arts starting in September 2010.

(My completed collage - Fish and a Bicycle)

This workshop was unlike any other art workshop I have taken part in.  It was more about the process of making art than the mechanics of painting and collage, although we did work on a variety of collage pieces.  Nick addressed specific questions about technique as they came up but the greatest value to me in this workshop was in the group discussions and the individual assessments of our pieces.  Nick's training as a psychotherapist was evident in his critiques which were as much about each of us as artists as they were about the art itself.  "Acknowledge all of who you are and your art will reflect that."

I tend to overthink when I'm faced with a blank page or canvas and that keeps me from getting started.  Nick's answer to that was, "Engage the process before engaging your brain."  Once I started just tearing and gluing down pieces of paper that I was attracted to, my collage took on a life of its own and ideas began to emerge.  This is the piece that I finished and, while it's different from anything I might have conceived normally, I kind of like it.

Nick also advised, "Don't try to control it; explore it," which was a challenge for me, but by deliberately starting without a clear idea of where I was going, I was free to go anywhere.  What I like about this piece has little to do with whether or not it has any artistic merit.  What I like is that I sat on my internal critic's head to give the piece a chance to see the light of day.  And I had fun with it. 

So I'm refreshed and inspired and looking forward to making art.  And I'm going to do my best to follow this piece of advice from Nick Bantock, "Make sure that what you do is feeding you and not draining you."


Side note:  Salt Spring Island was lush and green and flowers were blooming.  I came home to this.  The wind had pushed the breaking ice on the lake into a huge mountain, about 15 ft high, on my beach.

There's Always a Way Out

I finished this mixed media canvas last night and posted it on Etsy this morning. It's such a great feeling to finish a piece and know that this is how it was supposed to turn out.

While I'm working I sometimes despair that I will ever reach that point. It's sometimes hard not to just give up or to act like a
two year old and have a nice satisfying tantrum!

This painting started out as something entirely different and as I was obliterating the original sunny little scene, I started building a new story. Just as I was wondering how to finish the piece to clarify the message, my husband returned from the garbage dump with a pile of treasures from the recycle shed. Among those treasures was an old romance novel with these words on the back cover, "She was imprisoned by a torturous love." Oh, how I love the dump!

No traditional message of love in this piece but it is about love - self love - and having the courage to make difficult choices.

New Beginnings

I feel like I am on a learning curve that goes straight up! So far I have tackled Etsy, Facebook, a fan page, and Twitter. And now I'm starting a blog. Two months ago I was only thinking about opening a shop on Etsy.


So I opened my shop just before Christmas, http://lizannasonthelake.etsy.com/, and thought, like in Field of Dreams, I would list and 'they' would come. Apparently not. So here I am in a whole new world. I love the blogs and getting to know some of the wonderfully creative people behind the art in this intriguing on-line world.

And now that I've done all of this work to bring people into my studio, I guess I should get busy or 'they' will come and I won't have anything to sell.