The basis of the project is you start something (could be a painting, a poem, a short story–anything creative) and then you hand it off to someone else who adds to it. There’s almost no rules (like if you paint something, the next person can paint over it, around it, through it…), but when a ‘theme’ is started, the next artist tends to be inspired by it and carries it on, modifying and taking it to new places.

Here is my ’start’ for the project–I’ve been studying the tarot card ‘Death’ (it’s all about transformation and metamorphosis, not necessarily physical death), so I started with a typical symbol of that card–a skeleton. This is 14 x 18 inches, the skeleton is troweled on modeling paste, dried, sanded, and with several acrylic washes over the top.

And here is the final product, the ideas of each artist added in and around the starting image. Pretty impressive, no?

To see all the other projects along with pictures of us all, please visit Marianne’s oh-so-active blog–here’s the entry for The Exquisite Corpse.

Part of the goal for these projects (as I found out once I got to Marianne’s!) is to put them in the We Art Women silent auction. I don’t think that Pam is going to part with hers, and honestly, don’t know if I can part with mine either! We’ll see…I figure I’ll frame it up and decide in a week or so.

3×4 inch Mezzotint – first proof

There were a couple of things that inspired this print.

Robot Show at Boise Art Museum I saw the ‘All is full of Love’ video by  Bjork and was fascinated by the human features in the middle of the robot faces. It really coincided with my Eye image–I was trying to protray an organic, human element trapped in an artificial vessel. I started experimenting with robots with human elements, but that been done A LOT and tossed that idea for the moment. I’ve been doing some sketches on the Death Tarot card (which usually features a skeleton–the card signifies transformation and metamorphosis) so I have a bunch of skull images and drawings. This image just popped into my head–we all have death hovering as a part of our lives. It’s just a matter of time, isn’t it?

Be a little Outrageous – I always play it safe. Deep inside I actually do worry about what people think about my images, more specifically what my images say about me. I recently saw the ad that Lynda Benglis had in the November 1974 issue of ArtForum and I thought now THAT’S outrageous. I should loosen up a little! (not going to post that photo here. Image-google the artist’s name and you’ll know immediately what I’m referring to! Be warned, it’s a tad graphic…whoo boy) So, what I got out of all that: I shouldn’t worry about my art reflecting my thoughts and feelings, that’s what makes one image more interesting than another. And I really shouldn’t worry about what people think it says about me!

Here is the first print I pulled using a standard pressure like you would for etching, using 3 blankets–catcher, cushion and pusher. This scan doesn’t show exactly how the print looks, but I think you can see what I’m talking about. The blacks are weak, the details are muddy–you’d think that I messed up the plate!

Here is the same plate, same wiping technique, but I did various things to increase the pressure: Eliminated the cushion, cranked the pressure as far as I could get it and put four layers of dry stonehenge on top of the plate and the damp Rives BFK. Again, scans don’t really show this very well, but the difference between these two prints in real life is astonishing.

Here is my first print–I’m really happy with it. The image is 3×2 inches (not very big). It took 3-4 hours to create the ground using my 3-inch mezzotint rocker. Then, the image took about 2-3 hours to create, plus a little more for proofing and fine-tuning.

So, I found the most incredible work on a site where the artist embellishes monotypes with watercolor and colored pencils. That’s what’s inpired my recent posts, right? So, quickly I realized that I just don’t understand watercolors. I can do a tolerable job with colored pencils (at least, I think it’s tolerable!) but I figured I’d better learn how to do watercolors.

I found  a couple of really good books that point out that you really have to have GOOD materials, and the dirt-cheap watercolor tubes I bought for my classes just didn’t cut it. You know the ones (without naming names)…$2 for 24 tubes of ‘fine artist’s watercolors’? If they’re so fine, how come there’s no pigment information on the tubes? So, I shopped around and figured out that Winsor Newton are the ones to have. Ummm…$26 for a tiny tube of Alizarin Crimson. Maybe I don’t need THAT fine a quality watercolors while I’m learning, so I bought a Cotman set (still Winsor Newton, but their ’student’ grade) of half-pans. What a difference! I’ve been happily following the instructions in the watercolor method books I bought and I think I’m starting to figure this out!

Anyway, here is a painting I did for the Virtual Paintout this month (which is Corsisa).