Friday, April 19, 2013

Beginning the 3X3

Every year our local art club, Placerville Arts
Association, has a 3D show for its members.  We hold the show in a local gallery and to ensure that we have enough art for the walls - we don't usually get much 3D art that hangs on the wall - we also include "3x3"s.  Each 3x3 is a collection of nine 8"x8" 2D pieces by one artist centering around a theme chosen by the artist.  We then hang the collections on racks 3 colums wide and 3 rows high - hence "3x3."

This year I decided to continue with the mixed media collage work that I experimented with at our art camp a few weeks ago.  Each piece will have a collage background then painting on top of that. 

My theme will be related to tea, so I've collected several different teabag wrappers, teabag tags, and paper tea container labels that I'll incorporate into the backgrounds.  I also bought some vintage hand-written recipe cards on Etsy and am tearing pages from a "Joy of Cooking" cookbook that I've had since the 60s!  I found it difficult to tear up and use those old recipe cards, but not so tough to tear a page or few from the cookbook!

Here's the background for the first piece.  I'm thinking I'll finish all the backgrounds before I begin the painting.

My original idea was to paint portraits of some of the vintage English bone chine teacups I've been collecting, perhaps incorporating birds in the designs.  So I photographed one of the cup-and-saucers, printed it, and cut it out.  When I layed it against the background, though, I found that my concept won't work.  The tea cups are too delicate and fussy to fit with this type of background.

So now I'm thinking that I'll paint birds and fruit.  So, for example, on this one which uses paper from Twining's Passion Fruit, Mango, and Orange, I'd probably paint one of those fruits with a bird standing on top of it.  I'm thinking I'll keep the birds somewhat fanciful.

But, as I say, I'm going to complete all the backgrounds first and, as far as the painting is concerned, continue to wait for the perfect idea to strike.  It could be a long wait!

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