Glitter Among the Grit

Drawing with fine point Sharpie and watercolor. Different from anything I have ever done. I saw an image in a magazine of an old woman and decided to use the light box to trace it.

Weaving and Eleanor Roosevelt

These are both pieces that I did a while back. The top piece is a weaving project that our teacher assigned. I added spray adhesive in hopes of sealing the project but it went terribly wrong and the pieces ended up all tangled and tattered. It took me over 2 weeks to weave all of the tiny strips of paper together, and it was ruined! Oh well, the other piece is an incremental gradient portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt. Again, it took me a pretty long time to do. I am not crazy about either of these pieces, but I figured that I would upload them anyway.

'Ma' Inspired by Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

I really like the results of my first use of resin on top of my mixed media piece. I was using vintage laces as well as threads and even an old brooch and I really wanted to capture and compliment the texture of these objects and materials. I wanted to try an alternative to encaustic and I really like the results. I have to say, this is probably one of my favorites so far. I will use this as a concentration piece. I also chose to use resin rather than encaustic because the encaustic technique tends to cover up a lot of the texture in lace and fabrics. Rather than cover it up, I wanted to accentuate the fabrics, as they represented Ma, the inspiration for this piece.

Grenouille

This piece was inspired by a novel I was reading entitle Perfume. I used lots and lots of layers of found papers, thread, and encaustic wax. I think this will be one of my concentration pieces. I felt like it was missing something but I was unsure of how to improve it. Any suggestions?

This piece is done on a small canvas with acrylic paint. I wanted to do something abstract that was still 'my style'. I intend to use this piece for breadth in my portfolio. I really like the colors and I'm glad that Mr. Brandt pushed me to create variety by adding found objects. It definitely adds to the piece and gives it more depth. The found objects I used included gauze and strips of paper.

Quill Me Now

This is my first quilling piece. It took me so long that I'm not sure if there will be another quilling piece. Let me put it into perspective: The quilled square is about 4 inches by 4 inches. There are approximately 40 quills per square inch. Each quill takes roughly two minutes to make. So, do the math- thats a LONG time. Quilling is a technique that I have been researching for a while and I finally decided to try it. Basically, using a quilling tool, you wrap a thin piece of paper around the quilling tool to make a coil. After this step, you can choose to release the coil as much or as little as you choose. I didn't release the coils at all, so they are very tightly wound. Once you have reached the end of the paper strip, just seal the coil with adhesive (I used Elmers). To get a perfect square shape, I made a square matboard template and placed and glued the coils inside. After I was finished, I removed the template. I really like the finished product. But, as you can see by its title, 'Quill Me Now', it was really tedious and I'm not sure that I would duplicate this willingly.