Art I'm Making: September 2014 Collage Work

New collages. These two are further explorations using the raspberry-colored papers I've been making, but also drawing on some of the striated indigo blue papers I've made in Untitled Collage No. 69 (Santa Rosa) above and using the mossy green papers of a few weeks back in Untitled Collage No. 70 (Santa Rosa) below.

Click on the images for larger views. For more, use the Art I'm Making tab to the right or visit my collage and photography website at http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site/ (requires Flash Player).

Visit my studio during the 2014 Sonoma County Art Trails open studios event, Saturday and Sunday, October 11th and 12th and Saturday and Sunday, October 18th and 19th, 2014

Art I'm Making: More Collages (September 2-3)

In the past week I've completed a couple more collages. Untitled Collage No. 67 (Santa Rosa) shown at the top uses more of the raspberry colored papers I've recently made but also incorporates bits and pieces leftover from older work.

Below, Untitled Collage No. 68 (Santa Rosa) uses a piece of green paper with graphite scribbling on it as well as some deep blue papers and a scrap of dark blue mono-printed paper that involved scraping into the paint on the glass with different tools to create lines of various sizes. These two were completed on September 2 and September 3.

Click on the images for larger views. For more, use the Art I'm Making tab to the right or visit my collage and photography website at http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site/ (requires Flash Player).

Visit my studio during the 2014 Sonoma County Art Trails open studios event, Saturday and Sunday, October 11th and 12th and Saturday and Sunday, October 18th and 19th, 2014

Art I'm Making: Yet More Collages (August 2014)

Visiting a friend recently, I sampled some of his favorite chocolate bars, exotically flavored with green tea, cardamom, and other ingredients. They come in velvety paper wrappers that I just couldn't resist using in a couple of new collages. These are Untitled Collage No. 65 (Santa Rosa) and Untitled Collage No. 66 (Santa Rosa). The wrinkled red paper and the orange paper are from the chocolate bars. I finished these two at the end of August.

Click on the images for larger views. For more, use the Art I'm Making tab to the right or visit my collage and photography website at http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site/ (requires Flash Player).

Visit my studio during the 2014 Sonoma County Art Trails open studios event, Saturday and Sunday, October 11th and 12th and Saturday and Sunday, October 18th and 19th, 2014

Art I'm Making: New Collages (August-September 2014)

I continue to make collages at a fairly steady pace--roughly finishing one a week. Here are Untitled Collage No. 63 (Santa Rosa) and Untitled Collage No. 64 (Santa Rosa). Both use new papers I've created in raspberry and dark blue-black colors with a lot of striping and scratching done with a cake decorating tool and the back end of a paint brush.

Click on the images for larger views. For more, use the Art I'm Making tab to the right or visit my collage and photography website at http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site/ (requires Flash Player).

Visit my studio during the 2014 Sonoma County Art Trails open studios event, Saturday and Sunday, October 11th and 12th and Saturday and Sunday, October 18th and 19th, 2014

Art I'm Making: New Collages

I make collages by pasting together pieces of paper onto which I've directly painted with acrylic paints or made mono-prints on (again using acrylics). I recently made some attractive mossy green prints that have become part of new collages. Shown here are my Untitled Collage No. 48 (Santa Rosa) and Untitled Collage No. 49 (Santa Rosa).

Click on the images for larger views. For more, use the Art I'm Making tab to the right or visit my collage and photography website at http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site/ (requires Flash Player).

Visit my studio during the 2014 Sonoma County Art Trails open studios event, Saturday and Sunday, October 11th and 12th and Saturday and Sunday, October 18th and 19th, 2014.

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 40 (May 9, 2014)

Finished another little collage yesterday, mostly in the color of faded blue jeans, white, and with a little green in it as well. Acrylic on paper, acrylic mono-print on paper, collage. Image size 10 x 10.8cm.

Click on the images for larger views. For more, use the Art I'm Making tab to the right or visit my collage and photography website at http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site/ (requires Flash Player).

Visit my studio during the 2014 Sonoma County Art Trails open studios event, Saturday and Sunday, October 11th and 12th and Saturday and Sunday, October 18th and 19th, 2014.

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 38 (Santa Rosa); Untitled Collage No. 39 (Santa Rosa)

 Two new collages. These made from scraps left over from other work, again predominantly in shades of indigo and orange. Untitled Collage No. 38 (Santa Rosa) and Untitled Collage No. 39 (Santa Rosa). Both were made using paper either painted directly with acrylic paints or mono-printed. The first of the two, includes some graphite scribbling.  April 23, 2014. Image size 9.3 x 11.3cm (No. 38) and 13.5 x 10.5cm (No. 39).

Click on the images for larger views. For more, use the Art I'm Making tab to the right or visit my collage and photography website at http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site/ (requires Flash Player).

Visit my studio during the 2014 Sonoma County Art Trails open studios event, Saturday and Sunday, October 11th and 12th and Saturday and Sunday, October 18th and 19th, 2014.

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 33 (Santa Rosa)--March 23, 2014

A new abstract collage in indigo and peachy tones. This one ended up divided into two zones. It looks like a cut-away view of a piece of land with a blue chthonic zone below and something ethereal above. That was not intended and not important really. I just liked the colors and the textures of the acrylic mono-printed and painted paper elements I used. The image is 11cm x 14.5cm. Click on the picture for a larger view. For more, use the "Art I'm Making" tab at right.

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 32 (Santa Rosa), March 8, 2014

There's a large pile of painted paper scraps on the floor of my office/studio. Yesterday, I began combing through them, looking for the more interesting pieces. Having set aside a few scraps with appealing colors and attractive patterns, I began to set some of them side by side and quickly came up with a new composition, again using mostly indigo and orange. Although unintentional, this one has something of the feel of a landscape.

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 31 (Santa Rosa), March 5, 2014

And yet another collage. This one did not come easily. I re-worked it many times before coming up with something I liked. And then I lopped off its head, so to speak--cutting off an additional section at what is now the bottom of this composition that had more of the orange elements in it. Ultimately, I liked it best like this, having removed that extra orange portion and then inverted the image. Funny how a piece can seem almost right but continue to irk. Sometimes what finally fixes it is the addition of something new. Sometimes, as in this case, it's a subtraction. The fun thing about collage is that the subtracted bits often find their way into other pieces.

Collage of paper painted with acrylics and mono-printed elements also made using acrylic paints (image size 16.5cm x 13.2cm).

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 30 (Santa Rosa)

I just finished another collage. This one features some curved elements. I recently found a good paper cutter that cuts circles--which will make it possible to add more curved lines to the work I'm doing. Curves made sense here because of the spiraling line in the upper part of the composition. This is another piece made from painted paper using acrylic paints and from mono-printed elements (16.5cm x 18cm).

For more, use the Art I'm Making label at the right.

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 29 (February 18, 2014)

I finished another new collage recently. This one is something of a departure for me because it includes a found object--a numeral three printed on a slip of white paper. It was the wrapper around a bundle of silverware at one of downtown Santa Rosa's brew pubs (The Third St. Ale Works). Normally I don't use found objects because I don't trust them. They tend to fade or yellow, but this one seemed relative safe. It's printed on plain paper in a single color--black--and black tends to hold up. Otherwise, I've again used paper painted with acrylic paints, along with mono-printed elements made with acrylics on paper as the raw materials for the composition, although this one also includes a couple of lines in graphite as well. In the photo here, the lower section looks black, perhaps, but it's actually a deep indigo. Only the numeral is black.

For more, use the Art I'm Making label at right.

Art I'm Making: More Collages (February 6, 2014)

The day before yesterday I turned to my paints again, eager to try out a new color I bought in the wonderful Sennelier acrylic line, this one called "Warm Grey." I covered a few sheets of paper with the color and some other pale tones--the ones they call "Parchment" and "Titan Buff" among them. I doodled a little with a graphite stick. Later I got out "Prussian Blue Hue" (This one from Graham rather than Sennelier), and printed a few more sheets of paper from a plate of glass and used some of these mono-printed sheets to print on other sheets of paper. Armed with all this new raw material, I quickly put together three new collages that I'm rather pleased with. I really like the Sennelier colors and the effects I've been achieving by printing onto paper using mono-printed elements. These new collages have a rather different feel from some of the others I've done, but I'm pleased with them.

Art I'm Making: New Collages (January 26, 2014)

I've finished three new collages in the past week. All three are made from pieces of painted paper (paper painted directly with acrylic paint) or of paper cut from small mono-printed elements. Occasionally I incorporate pieces of handmade paper, but nearly all of what I use is made by painting or printing on plain paper. In one of these (top photo) I've also used a slightly three-dimensional element, although it's hard to see in the photo here. These are collages number 23, 24, and 25.

The collages are small--the smallest (bottom photo) measuring only about 3 x 4 inches, the larger two measuring about 5 x7 inches each.

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 20 (Santa Rosa) (December 25, 2013)

I finished another collage on Christmas morning. It has nothing to do with Christmas. It's just another abstraction using painted papers and paper that I've printed on using the monotype technique (paint spread on a glass surface, manipulated, and then printed onto a sheet of paper). This one also incorporates scraps of a handwoven, dyed sheet of paper that I found at our local art supply store, Village Art Supply, in Montgomery Village. I'm hoping that its color won't fade, as the plum color went very well with colors I already had at hand.