Kenny Rogers sang it – you gotta know when to walk away. I tried a new and unfamiliar theme last night, wanted to visit the 30s and Art Deco. It didn’t work from the start – I didn’t have a feel for the images or the era and tried to bluff my way through using color and line. Along the frustrating way, I learned a lot, particularly to stick with what calls you and don’t try to force your art in a direction that you want to control when you don’t feel the story. See the photos and the resulting cover-up. The first three show that it wasn’t bad — it just wasn’t RIGHT. As I’m always saying, there’s more than one right answer in art and design, but this wan’t one of them.
The more I read in the book Art and Fear, the more I realize this, taken from page 56, “One of the best-kept secrets of artmaking is that new ideas come into play far less frequently than practical ideas – ideas that can be re-used for a thousand variations, supplying the framework for a whole body of work rather than a single piece.”
I still have thousands of variations to explore in themes that I love – Asian, Renaissance, surrealism. . for example, the rooster (last photo) in the now-recovered false start of a cover has a lot of potential and a story to tell. Can’t wait to see how he turns out.

This morning I had intentions of finishing the insides of a completed collage cover to be called Cloister. As I took a last look at the front, I thought it needed one more gold strip so I tried it in a couple of places using logical rules of composition. There’s not a lot of conscious talk going on at this phase — it’s just whatever “art/instinct/create/process” is.

Before I decided, I happened to see a spare picture of Empress Josephine from a previous cover next to the one I was working on. Hmmmm…what a difference it made to the Cloister story if I included the portrait of an intriguing secular woman – an artistic “aha” moment.

I found a likely candidate in my Raphael book, innocent and young but definitely up to something. I liked her in black and white, but it was too jarring, so I aged her with a bit of walnut ink and applied her to a small raised panel and attached he between the two main figures.

>

The result? A new and stronger story – I love the art/collage process. It can “tell” you exactly what’s needed, sometimes by design and sometimes by the muse throwing in a happy accident. And it’s all done in a fraction of the time it takes to try and explain it.

There’s always more than one right answer in creating artwork, but this one worked for me.

I am the first to admit that my photos of my work are not the best. I have problems with lighting because of the reflective surfaces. Recently I saw a table light tent setup in a Sky Mall magazine on the plane back from Delaware for $99 plus $20 shipping, but once I got home I found this one for about $35 by doing a web search.

It arrived today from Cowboy Studios via Amazon, and I’m impressed with it. The whole thing, including lights, tripod and four backdrops fits into a fairly flat 18×18″ case that unfolds to make the tent. i didn’t have any new work to shoot, but I took a photo of a rock (see last picture) – hey, if it stands still, I’ll collage it 🙂

End of commercial, but I definitely think this setup will make my photos better, and it’s certainly affordable and portable.

I have been having a hard time finding exactly the right bead/button closures for my ereader covers. This morning when I woke up early, the good ol’ muse voice in my head said, “Make you own.” I had everything I needed – old leftover polymer clay from my art teacher days that was still good, complete with roller, some gold leaf from collages, and assorted other stuff including some long-ago clay-building ideas remembered from my studies with potter Tracy Dotson. I am very excited with the results! Take a look at the first batch, all done between 6 and noon today! From now on, all of my handmade collage covers will sport handmade closures.

This is less of a technique and more of a lucky find. When we were visiting my friend Victoria, she gave me some joss paper – also known as ghost money, they are sheets of paper that are burned in traditional Chinese deity or ancestor worship ceremonies during special holidays. They also happen to be a very nice fit for the first layer of the Kindle covers that I design and construct. You can see from the photos that they wrap well around the base construction. The paper is not very heavy and will need to be reinforced by other stronger paper layers, but the gilt finish takes on glazes and inks very well. The last photo is of work in progress, some with joss paper background layers.

Here’s a video I took out of the airplane window as we were flying from Baltimore to Houston Wednesday night on the way home from our art weekend in Rehoboth. There’s no story line or plot to this video, but it was so serene watching the clouds go by at almost-sunset.
Nickel Creek’s Seven Wonders is the background music, added from my iPod.