Simple glitz

I've been working to finish my last "art" piece for school. It surprised me how long each item took, and I wish that I would have had more time to work on things.

This is sort of a random/weird piece, but it is what I felt like doing at the time. I started out thinking that I was going to do a collage in a Traci Bautista frame of mind (or maybe Angela Cartwright). I have such a hard time following Traci Bautista's theory of just putting things together and playing with it. I always worry how it is going to look or turn out. I can't quite let myself just be complete freestylin'.

I started with a pale robin egg blue canvas, but then really didn't get a good feeling from that. I put some darker (turquoise) blue over that, but then it looked too dark and not really what I was hoping for. I threw on some gel medium and spread the second coat out a little and tried to give it some texture. Then I toyed around with about 150 different ideas. I ended up deciding to put a little design of sequins in the corner, and then decided that I'd throw on some glitter. Then I had a moment of panic because the collage idea was pretty much out then. I didn't know what to do, so I tried to take some of the collage pieces and lay them out. I also used a transparency to make some doodles that I was going to put over and attach. But then I couldn't find just the right layout, so I scrapped that idea. I had this piece of silk fabric stitched onto paper and then a piece of paper stitched onto it (with some doodles), so I decided that I'd use that as the focal point. I started to move it around the canvas, and some of the strands of silk came off and fell onto the paint. They were shiny, so then I thought that they would work and kind of add additional texture and hints of color. This cemented my thinking about the final product.

I added some glitter glue to the sequin corner and added a few other sequins. Then it looked sort of weird, so I tossed in some red/pink shiny seed beads to coordinate with the pink of the silk and draw the invisible diagonal between the two.




I stitched the fabric swatch onto the canvas and then attached a button that came from a collection that I had when I was young. It was one of those strange costume jewelry type of things, but I loved the color and remember cherishing the button when I was a child. The color worked, so I used it to tie in another layer of texture and then left the thread (another texture/color choice) hanging to try to keep the Bautista idea in mind.

This is sort of an abstract piece of work; something I'm not used to doing. But I really thought that it combined the glitter, glitz and sparkle that I love, but maintained the simplicity that is truly me.

This is the full glance at it, but I can't quite get the lighting right, so the fabric looks washed out.

This is different lighting and the blue looks washed out too. LOL.