I had an incredibly awesome time at Art Unraveled. Sigh. I want to take an art class every day! I don’t want to go back to my regular life, I don’t want to! You can’t make me! Well, I guess you can make me. Doh. The AU experience was wonderful because it was so validating. I don’t totally suck! I can do this! WOO HOO!
The first class I took was Creating a Visual Memoir by the one and only art goddess Lynne Perella. I love Lynne’s work. She is inspiring and I worship her (truly), so when I saw that she was coming to Art Unraveled again I knew I had to take a class from her. It. Was. Wonderful. Lynne was incredibly encouraging and eloquent. She had us do some exercises on composition and creativity, and I learned so much from her. She talked about how she creates a work of art…that it is reactionary. She puts down one image, then she reacts to that image. Then she reacts again to the second image she placed, and so on. It was neat to hear her speak about her creative process because it’s similar to the way I approach things. When I start a project, I just start. I very rarely have an idea in my head…I just start putting color on the page and then I see what happens next.
She handed us all a HUGE (about 24" x 36") piece of red tar paper. It’s a construction supply….there is probably some under your carpet right now. We applied gesso liberally and then used different methods to create texture in the gesso before it dried. When it was dry, we started painting and applying layers. Lynne is a master layerer…as she says, you can’t fake layering. You must put in the work. So we layered away. When I thought I was stuck, Lynne would come by and tell me to keep going. She encouraged us and pushed us, and it was so wonderful I felt like crying.
Lynne said so many wonderful things about my art. I asked her how she knows when she is finished with a piece, and she said to me, "Your piece was beautiful 10 minutes after you started, and it’s beautiful now. You can stop whenever you feel you should." Of course, lest you think I was a pet, she was encouraging to everyone. But let me pretend that I was especially wonderful (LOL!). Many other students complimented me on my art, also, and took pictures of my piece.
So…on to the art. It’s huge…you have to realize that. It’s messy. It’s abstract. It looks better in person. As Lynne would call it, it’s "alternative art." So it’s kind of a big mess when you look at it as a whole. In fact, Lynn had many people make their piece into a book, since a large piece of crazy painted paper looks amazing when it’s cut down into smaller, more focused pages. I may make mine into a book…haven’t decided yet. Many of the other students in the class told me not to (LOL!…I guess they liked it as it was), but I still might. The paper is heavy and flexible and loaded with paint & collage. You can clicky click on the pics to enlarge them…the close-ups should show you more detail.
Okay, enough of that one.
Today’s class was Uber Self Portraits by Traci Bunkers. I went into this class very intimidated. This class was all about the finished product, while Lynne’s class was all about the process.
We had to take a photo of ourself & cut it into four quadrants. Then we had to have the quadrants color-copied and enlarged. We worked on each quadrant separately, then joined them at the end & mounted them on canvas. Then we added a bit more collage & paint to unify the whole piece. This was so fun! The canvas is 16" x 20".
