Tag Archives: collage

Gratitude Blooms

23 Friday Feb 2018

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dahlia dalliance

I’m working on a painting/collage that I’m calling Dahlia Dalliance and you get some hints of the process on these pages. I am continuing to play with layers to see how they interact and how they sometimes misbehave. Sometimes I discover errant art techniques when I’m playing with the idea in my art journal and other times I learn it on the painting itself. The beauty of working with layers is that it won’t be done until I’m happy with it. I’m not there yet, but stay tuned in the next week. I have been really busy with a lot of medical stuff in preparation for my surgery for endometriosis. Surgery is scheduled for April 11 so my postings and class offerings are going to be very limited for the next few months. I’m looking forward to more Zentangling to help me through.

I hope you find beauty in your day today.

Cumulative Gratitude

18 Saturday Nov 2017

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november 2017 election hopes

These gratitude journal pages cover most of November. In creating all the art for my current exhibit I fell behind in my gratitude journal. The recent election results give me hope for the future. I just hope that immigrants, people with health problems, those who face economic challenges and all of us who hope to believe in democracy can hold on until the 2018 election. The layers of red text on the left hand page were created with inspiration from Claudia McGill’s handwriting explorations. The right hand page is lots of influence from the collage class I have been taking.

I want to come back to the red text. It was made from an image I created with my therapist. She is an art therapist and I make very different things in there than I do at home. Here is a recent one. This is how I feel about doctors in general and being diagnosed with endometriosis at the age of 50. I don’t generally enjoy working with oil pastels, but in this context they are perfect.

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They also work as an interesting transfer. I then flipped this over and wrote in 2 directions on the back to do some journaling about my recent health exploits in my gratitude journal. That is what appears so subtly on the left hand page. I think I’m going to have to explore this combination of techniques some more. This was very therapeutic.

 

Still Assembling the Pieces

01 Sunday Oct 2017

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JeanetteClawson_StillAssemblingThePieces_Mixed media on gessoboard_16x16

Mandala 52 of 100. This mandala is for the Dunya exhibit at Alhamra Art Center in Bernardsville, NJ, October 14, 2017- November 15, 2017.

DUNYA is a word common to many languages like Urdu, Arabic, Persian, Turkish. It has many layers of meanings. It can mean the ‘world’, the ‘earth’, the ‘society’ or ‘humankind’, the ‘mortal existence’.

Draw the Circle Wide Mandala

20 Wednesday Sep 2017

Posted by in Art, Art on Exhibit, Zentangle Inspired Art

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Draw the Circle Wide Layers

This may look familiar. It is part of a diptych I made for my living room. I’m greatly enjoying having them both up until the show at Alhamra Art Center in Bernardsville, NJ in October and November. Here they are together. They are mandalas 47 and 49 of 100!

Here are some process pictures of the second one.

I hope you have a beautiful day!

New Art Class Fun & WIP Update

14 Thursday Sep 2017

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RE introductionI’m taking a wonderful collage class about painting with paper and I’m loving it! I have already discovered some new toys and new interpretations of old ones. One of my old favorites is using parts of napkins to capture gratitude. Sometimes they are from specific events – such as these 2 funny ones from my Religious Education teacher training last weekend. I’m really looking forward to getting to know the 5th & 6th grade children and families from my Unitarian Fellowship.

I’m going to be doing more in my gratitude journal to experiment with ideas from this class. Yesterday I went to Michael’s to get my Eclipse Mandala framed for my October show and I bought a few fun things inspired by the class. None of them are in this art journal page layout because this is from the last week. Mandala 49 is almost done and this layout includes some experiments for that.

I’m also working on some art and a brochure for a class I will be offering in October. It is designed to get you started on a Zentangle® journal practice and will include the Pre-Strung Zentangle® journal. I should have an update in the next few days on this.

What is beautiful in your life today?

Draw the Circle Wide Mandala

25 Friday Aug 2017

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Big Mandala 47 done take 2

This is the large (for me 30″x30″) mandala that I have been working on all summer. There are a lot of layers and I took some pictures of the process. I really became fascinated with layers of acrylic glazes and am making a partner piece to this one that is more focused on that technique.

draw the circle wide mandala in progress

I started with collaged dictionary and other book pages onto the gessoboard. I also included some stamps. Then I did about a week’s worth of journaling on the board and stenciled a quote from a song that we sang at the Unitarian Fellowship I attend. This song has really resonated with me and really captures some of what I feel about my mandalas.

draw the circle wide mandala iris layer

I already shared this layer with you earlier in the summer.

Draw the circle wide collage mandala layer 1

At this point what I was envisioning for the mandala started to change. There were a number of intermediate layers that didn’t really work for me. So I got started on the mandala pieces. I’m still learning about layers in collage and what kinds of paint play well together. I used some gouache paint and that left wrinkles in some of the pieces, but I decided to incorporate some Wabi Sabi into the finished piece. I may add some more gold accents, but I think it is done.

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I played with a lot of different papers including navigation maps, dictionary pages, pages from a Chinese Poetry textbook and tissue. I continue to love how tissue paper works in collage. I used an old Vogue pattern for one of the pieces and decorated it with a Zentangle® pattern. Each of the pieces had some Zentangle® patterns.Big Mandala 47

I really toyed with leaving the layers show through in this point in the mandala but it was too much of a contrast from the other parts.

Big Mandala 47 done

Here is the fully assembled piece, but it needed some more Wabi Sabi so I added gold paint in a few of the joints. You can see it in these close up pictures of the details.

big big mandala 47 detail 2

big mandala 47 detail

The finished piece will be on exhibit at the Alhamra Art Center in September and October and is available for purchase through the Center. This is mandala 47 of 100. To join the 100 Mandala challenge check out Kathryn Costa’s website.

Big Mandala Update

01 Tuesday Aug 2017

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This summer I have been working on a large (30″ x 30″) mandala collage. You have already seen the background layers of the gessoboard. Here is a sample of the Zentangle patterned mandala pieces that I have been working on all summer. By the end of this week I hope to unveil the whole thing in a blog post of my process and the product. This is mandala 47 of 100.

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