Busy Week

It has rained nearly all week long, which for me has been good as it's kept me inside and busy making art. This first piece is a mixed media collage, 5x7, that I call "September Hydrangea". I've done a number of hydrangea pieces over the years. Some have been in collage, some in pastels and some even in oils, but this is the first time I've done one that depicts a hydrangea blossom after it's lost its color and dried. I'm kind of liking the way it looks, so it probably won't be the last time I use this as a subject.
This second piece is called "Designer Chocolates". In an effort to steer away from circles, I punched out a series of squares from the palette paper I spoke of in previous posts and started arranging them on dark chocolate colored banana paper. I was immediately reminded of a chocolate shop in the Town Center of Virginia Beach. which is a favorite of mine. It's called The Royal Chocolate. They make their own chocolates, but they also handle chocolates made by world famous chocolate makers; some of which are painted in edible food paints. The palette used is very similar to the colors I've used here and I was just reminded of my most favorite food group when I created this piece.
"Reverie" is what I call this collage piece. Once again, the punched out squares that I also used in Designer Chocolates, but this time I also used a special stamp that I love. I don't often use rubber stamps as a focal point for my pieces, but thought the colors in the background lent themselves to the dreamy expression on this woman's face. I stamped the image on transparent white Thai unryu paper. I like the way you can see the fibers of the paper against the background colors.
And, of course, I have to use up all the scraps! You can see the left over palette paper that I used to cut a circle for "Parallel Universe" (featured in an earlier post) and also all the squares for the two pieces above. I glued the scrap to a piece of purplish (what do they call this color?) Thai unryu paper that has gold metallic threads running through it and then punched more little pieces from more painted palette paper scraps. It reminds me of my high school years and I call it "70's Revisited".

So it's been quite the week. It almost makes me wish for more rain. NOT!!!