Dakota Sky

Doesn't that sound like a cool name for a girl? Now that I think of it, I might have heard it before. Anyway, I recently attempted to do a collage type piece of art, using a variety of mediums from paint, to thread, to photocopy. I have been admiring a lot of this type of artwork online recently. As I've mentioned before, I often admire artwork that's different than mine, or difficult for me. One thing I love about collage work-at least the ones I've been seeing- is how it looks so spontaneous and creative. I also love the variety of textures and media in these works.
Sometimes I have a hard time with this, because I'm so worried about ruining an aspect of my artwork by covering it up or changing it...even though I've learned time and time again, that when things don't go according to plan, these are usually much better for the change! I tend to be more methodical and pedestrian, which I sometimes want to get away from.
The reason  I started this painting was because I had two photos that I really loved, but they probably weren't going to be printed in my photo album, and I wanted to preserve them somehow:



















This first photo, I loved because it was out of focus. I wouldn't want this in an album, but it would look really neat as a  painting or something.

The second, I loved Elora's hair blowing in her face. It was pretty in its own right, and it also obscured her identity just like the blurry photo. It wasn't ideal for a "family memory" :




















I hadn't decided how I wanted to use this picture, but thought it'd be neat to combine the two images somehow. I took Jonah out of the picture and printed it on cardstock, still undecided what I'd do with it.

After a few days of thinking, I started on the piece. First, I did a watercolor of the blurry drawing on a big piece of scrapbook paper. Then I stuck on the bigger picture of the blowing hair. Before you ooh and aah over the big figure, no I didn't draw that one (though I certainly could); it is the photocopy of the photo. I wished I had more supplies that I needed, like this clear gesso medium stuff that you can glue artwork with, and it won't mess it up. Against my better judgment I used a little Elmer's glue. It worked okay, but there were a few gaps- then I had the brilliant idea of sewing it together! I love the added texture it gave the piece.
I  left it for a few days, not wanting to ruin it. I thought about how I'd felt a need lately to do more artwork/ writing about where we live and the experiences we have here. Each summer, we attempt to get a job somewhere else, and while things always look promising, we have so far ended up staying another year. Each time that it seems imminent that we might move, I feel a panic that I haven't used this peaceful, uncluttered time wisely!
So that planted the idea of maybe doing several pieces about South Dakota. Next, I remembered that I've been thinking about trying something with painting water droplets on a window, or a blurry scene through a window on a rainy day. On the spur of the moment, I splattered water onto the photocopy. Whoa, I guess I better make sure this never gets wet, water and photocopies aren't a good combination, in general. However, the splashes did look pretty cool on my artwork.

Over the next couple of days, I had a few more ideas. I dug up some old poems I had about rain and clouds. One was actually about rain in a tree, so I dissected the poem, removing and rearranging lines until it felt like an accurate description of rain on the grasslands. I printed these out and jazzed them up with some marker, then figured out where I wanted them on the painting, but only gluing down the one on the bottom left. (Hmm, I think I did that before I sewed it.)
I decided to draw some realistic raindrops in colored pencil and arranged them over the picture for a  trompe l'oeil (fool the eye) affect.
One afternoon, Jonah and Eli were bringing me lots of flowers from outside, and I decided it'd be cool to have those in the drawing too. I pressed a few of them, and took a couple of fresh ones, then spent an afternoon drawing them. I had greater respect for artists who do paintings of fresh flowers; it was hard to capture the fully open one because it was wilting and closing even as I drew it. I arranged these over the picture along with the rain drops.
I needed a few more things to pull it together- really, I think I needed some bigger elements to make it a little more cohesive, but I was loathe to cover up the watercolor too much! I went through my stuff for the kids scrapbooks and found a few stickers I liked, as well as a quote I included to the right.
The last thing I did was add some drawing elements on top of the photocopy, to help incorporate it more into the artwork. Then I was done!
My favorite parts are the raindrops (both the real water splotches and the drawings), the flowers, and the stitching:



















My least favorite parts are some of the white lines in Elora's hair, and the fact that it feels like it needs more big things to hold it together.






















And here's a photo of the finished piece again: