You never stop to amaze me with your collages. I love them all and I'm preparing to create my own, once I get home. It amazes me how you select the pieces, how you color them and how you decide their place on the paper. The story that comes with each of them is lovely and funny as well.
Congratulations!
Hi Erikah!
Thank you for the compliment!
I hope you will enjoy it as much as I do. I love painting/stenciling/printing the papers. Sometimes I take a weekend and spend hours just painting up papers. It's crazy fun. I make all colors and designs and textures. The only pretend problem with that is where to put the wet papers till they dry. I used to keep a huge piece of cardboard, lay it in an open space on the floor and put wet paint things there. Someone commented in group one time that she used an old shower curtain on the floor and I thought that was so simple and easy and would fold away nicely in-between times. Soon after I was in a Dollar General store and they had summer fun stuff out that included not only a colorful summer shower curtain, but also a colorful summer vinyl table cloth which would work as well, so I bought one of each. My washer and drying are in a nook in my short hallway and I fold the table cloth across the top of both and it makes a perfect place when my desk gets full, to transfer some of the papers there while I fill up my desk again. After a round or two some of the papers dry and I make a stack of them as I go.
Once I have a lot, I store them in plastic containers, but how they are stored is not so important. For me though, I keep them loosely divided between warm colors, cool colors and mixed warm/cool colors. I like to have a lot to choose from, although that is not totally necessary, it is just how I do it. Then when I am ready to make something, I have a lot to choose from. That doesn't mean if I don't have a color I want, that I won't stop and paint up a few at random times. There really are no rules unless you make them for yourself.
I few times I have actually made a fun piece because some paper pieces fell randomly on the table together and I liked how they looked, so I created a piece around them. Funny how that can happen.
Thanks for stopping over. Can't wait to see what fun stuff you come up with.
The process you described here is interesting and honestly it's very different from how my mind works. I have a few pieces of paper put aside because I see something in them, or better yet, I see what I could do with them. I see you're painting the pieces in advance and then select them to see what you can create with them. Very interesting.
Using shower curtain and table cloth to dry the paper on is a very good idea. Unfortunately my flat is not big enough to have a separate space for this, but I can still find a solution to spread the pieces till they dry.
I must confess, whenever I see your posts I'm thinking of how you could sell these works. Most likely you're attached to them, which is understandable, but at some point, when they start piling up, you'll need to make a decision. But the reason I'm saying this is to test the market, or better yet, to test if there's demand for it. I'm not an artist but for me it would be huge satisfaction to see someone willing to pay for what I create. Obviously this is not so simple as you have to consider shipping costs and the platform's cut, but still, it would be interesting to know 😉
Thank you for the nice reply and I wish you a productive weekend. I'm heading home towards the end of the week and then I'm sure I'll find time to start creating something. 🤗
To me, that is the beauty of this medium, it is done so many ways. With all your art exposure I am sure you have seen that some folks nearly only use magazine and/or book photo bits and arrange them different ways. Lots of folks include markers of many kinds to add fun details to whatever paper arrangement they have made. The majority of collage artists that encourage folks to play in it, often say "use what you have", junk mail, any papery art supplies you already have, tissue paper, bits of wrapping paper, receipts, anything you clean out of your files if you still keep paper, anything really, if it is paper, it counts. Lots of folks also include things like twine, ribbon, bits of leftover lace and the such too. There just really are no boundaries. So whatever you have will work, because ... it just will. I didn't start out full blown like I do it now, I started out using what was here. It just grew to what it is now because I play in it every day.
I am not sure at this moment what I might choose to do on the selling side. Before collage, I sold some paintings that I have done for years, but I never ventured to sell online. I wasn't sure when I started painting that I wasn't supposed to give my art away. I have done some of that too! I just make it up as I go along, but there is a half a thought about taking it further one day. Like you said about the packaging and shipping and the such, there are many things to consider before staring something like that. I don't know if you have ever looked at the DPW site or not. It is not the booming place like the big sites are, but for about $13 a month, you can put your art there and sell or directly folks to your Etsy account or wherever you sell if you sell on another site. There are lots of kinds of art there from very good artists to not so great. You can put in "collage" and see what some folks have put there. I don't know how successful of a place it is for artists, but it's and inexpensive way to show art while you learn to test the waters.
Hope you have a good week and a safe trip home.
Thanks for coming by.