Good With Glue

Good With Glue SOLD

When I was in art school we all had to take the Color class in which we learned about value, tones, shades, hue, saturation, contrast, etc. Part of the class involved making compositions to illustrate those concepts.
One young man was terrible at this task, making the most embarrassingly bad compositions. The best that could be said in encouragement, was that he was 'good with glue'.
Here we have an example of such a composition. I had a fabulous time making this mess, and forgot all about my pledge to not throw everything in my arsenal into the mix.
O well.
I found a drawer full of inks that I had forgotten, as well as jars of new unopened paint. (You may think I have lots of yarn, but when it comes to art supplies, O dear!) I have ink pens that one dips, watercolor pens, paint pens, markers in metallic (probably dried up) and assorted sticks of color like pastels, oil pastels and colored pencil-sticks. I also discovered that I now own four brayers. Hundreds of paint brushes in plastic shoe boxes, are also part of my collection. Not to mention hundreds of dried up tubes of various paints. Some are leftover from my undergraduate years. I will be weeding things out this time around, I promise.
I love looking at the cropped bits for insights into better compositions. Less is more here, doncha agree? I used lots of different painted papers, on top of a painted acid free mat board (8x10"), including the paper palette which is waxy on one side and plain on the other. It glued down just as nicely as the 'good' papers.

What's nice about acrylic paint is that it dries fast, can be worked into with other media, and is basically colored glue. Mediums such as gloss, gel and matte, dry clear, so no messy glue shows in the finished product. When I found my inks I had to try them out and began making marks wherever I could find a clear spot. This was the most fun.
Just so you know, I had no expectations of greatness going in. No plan of attack, other than to rip some papers and arrange them on the mat. Color scheme? Duh, never thought about it. I did remember some techniques about glazing to bring the whole thing together. This is making a transparent layer of some color + matte medium that one washes over everything in hopes of unifying the lot. I did this and immediately wiped most of it away. In this case a glaze couldn't work miracles.
Then we lost power in the house and without light, I figured I was done painting. So it could have gotten worse.
My art quilting friend Sylvia Whitesides  is also painting these days and just had a successful gallery show which is viewable on her blog. We have been discussing painting and how the general public will 'get' a painting over an art quilt most of the time. Only the educated in art quilts understands the value of them. She has mentioned how difficult it is to not overdo the painting and calls it editing. Yes. Editing is something I must learn.