Yesterday's adventure had a cerebral nature.
My favourite art medium is collage. Last summer, I commissioned all four grandkids to create a picture for me. Maybe a bird, preferably an owl or hawk. Two grandkids came through so far and one took his own artistic license and painted a fox. Well, fox and owl it is. Limitations are helpful when collaborating.
I re-sized their images in a few sizes, and traced them on to watercolour paper over a lamp which worked as an improvised light table. Then, I painted them with watercolours, using the originals as colour reference. Then cut them out. The bunny was an earlier commission from Charlotte.
I cut up two giclée prints and one original painting that I was getting tired of looking at into 5"X7" rectangles. One of the prints below is a copy of a painting of the back of some stores on John St. in Port Hope. So those rectangles became the bases on which I collaged the cutout animals and tried to make it all make sense with a quote. That's the cerebral part.
So much fun!
If you look carefully, you will see that this card was made with the bottom right rectangle from the above photo.
The card below is one of four sections of an original painting I did on site at Upper Canada Village maybe 15 years ago or so. Loucks Farmhouse. The fox was the only cutout that would remotely work with the background.
There were some slivers of printed image left when cutting out the rectangles. Hmmmm.... they make great posts. Magical.
I originally had one owl glued to this image and couldn't find a quote that worked. Putting two there opened up a whole new category of quotes. Friendship ones.
Two owls worked just fine with this image too. They are extremely out of proportion to the background, but it really doesn't matter. Maybe you feel really big when you have a good friend.
Below is the second print which was cut into 4 pieces. It is of a painting I did of a house on Pine Street in Port Hope in the early 2000's. At that time, I was just learning watercolours and still using my first medium, ink. You can see the inked trees in the background.
I have given this quote to many an artist at Brookside over the years.
Two owls again. I love that they are having a deep conversation about life while sitting high in the branches. And, if Mary Oliver had more short quotes, I'd be using them. One challenge in this project is for the quotes to not dominate the design. In this case, they are sitting on the quote. Handy.
I saved this one to second last because I knew it would be fun to find a quote for it. There's a better view of the house on Pine.
I was excited to find cutouts and words for this huge blank space below. I saved the best challenge for last. With the two bunnies, it seemed to me like they were looking at something. Trying to figure it out.
Well, my stash has been replenished. Thank you to my collaborators, Ewen & Charlotte.
“Alone we can do so little;
together we can do so much”
Helen Keller
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