October 16th, 2024
Phillips@THEARC, Washington, DC
I will be running a collage workshop at The Phillip’s Collection at THEARC location. More details about the event will be shared in the upcoming weeks on this page.
Andrew McMahon has been one of my favorite musicians for years. Ever since I was a teenager, I’ve put many of his albums on repeat. Even now, as an adult, I continue to enjoy listening to his new and old music, as well as seeing him perform live. I thought it would be great to create a portrait of Andrew since his music has meant a lot to me.
It took me a decent chunk of time to complete this piece, although it wasn’t as much of a struggle as some of my other portraits. I think it would be fun to work on a series of musician portraits, although I might start working on another series inspired by a TV show soon. We shall see…
This weekend I finished the 18th, and last (for now), portrait in my collage series inspired by The Office, “Gabe Lewis” (played by Zach Woods). I may revisit this series again in the future, but for now, I’m putting it aside and turning to something new. It’s been fun tackling so many characters, and I’m happy with how many I was able to complete. This series was definitely a challenge, and I’m happier with some portraits more so than others, but overall, I like how I challenged myself for this one. With my next portraiture series, I definitely want to work harder at being completely happy with every work of art.
Up next? I think I’ll explore making some portraits of musicians before I dive into more portraits inspired by another TV series. And I may alternate between working on a portrait and a collage that can be part of a still life or landscape/cityscape series. To be determined…
When I was a kid, my parents often signed me up for classes at a local art gallery, and just about every year, I took an art class in school. Over the years, I experimented with a variety of mediums – from ceramics to bookbinding, and from painting to charcoal drawing. I was always making something and enjoyed taking classes that introduced me to different techniques and mediums.
In high school, I started exploring the collage medium more. Previously, I had only ever made collages that were more stereotypical – filled with cutout words, phrases, and entire images that created more of a “vision board” look. But in high school, I started exploring mixed media along with magazine cutouts:
I was drawn to how spontaneous the medium felt – how I never knew what fragments of images I’d find when paging through a magazine. However, I still felt a need to draw or make some sort of physical mark on the page since I was so accustomed to making art that way. Later on, I focused on making collages with magazine cutouts that I drew on top of with oil pastel:
Once I reached college, I started to focus primarily on how I could make works of art entirely from magazine cutouts. I was drawn to the challenge of finding all the right colors and textures for a given composition:
Ultimately, I picked collage as my creative medium because, of all the mediums I explored, collage was my favorite. It made sense to focus entirely on collage and really explore that medium since it was something I enjoyed so thoroughly.
And now, I have only made collages for the past several years. Perhaps I will revisit some other mediums at some point, but for now, I enjoy challenging myself by tackling different compositions with collages made entirely from magazine cutouts.
I can’t believe I’ve made it all the way to portrait number seventeen in my collage series inspired by The Office. “Erin Hannon” (played by Ellie Kemper) wasn’t the easier portrait to tackle, although I may have my recent travels and half marathon training to blame for that. I’ve noticed that some portraits may be more of a struggle than others, especially when I haven’t been able to dedicate a consistent routine to working on them.
And now, I just have one more portrait left in this series before I pivot and work on a new series. Perhaps I’ll revisit this one to add more portraits of supporting characters, but for now, this series is nearly complete.
The other day I heard from Mrs. Crooks who shared her student art from Class 1 at the Ysgol Gellifor School in Wales, UK. Her students range from ages 3 – 7. They studied my collages as part of their food topic in school where they made their own “painting with paper” collages.
The students used a variety of solid and textured magazine cutouts to make their collages.
Once the students completed their pieces, they covered their pictures with PVA glue.
I really enjoyed taking a look at the variety of colors and subjects the students collaged. They did an excellent job of making these works of art inspired by food, and it’s very impressive that they are such young artists. Collage can be a very challenging medium for beginners since it requires the patience to page through magazines to find the right colors and textures, as well as cutting and layering all the bits of paper.
“Andy Bernard” is the sixteenth collage portrait in my series inspired by The Office. This one took a little longer than expected to complete since I was doing a bit of traveling earlier in the month. Thus I wasn’t able to devote a lot of time to collage-making. Hopefully I’ll be able to changes things up in the upcoming months and carve out more time to work on art.
This piece wasn’t as much of a struggle as some of the other portraits have been. I also enjoyed collaging a colorful shirt and sweater vest for him. I’m excited to see what the completed series look like. I believe I’ll have things wrapped up within a couple of months and then I’ll most likely move on to a musician series.
Bosty really wanted to do some hiking in the Rockies so he went to Denver, CO the other day. He loved the view of all the mountains and trees.
After hiking, he headed over to the Denver Art Museum to take a look at the work of some local and international artists. There’s nothing quite like getting an art fix for the day!
Later he stopped by an alpaca farm to make some new friends.
He did some exploring outside of the farm and really enjoyed seeing all the red rocks accenting the hilly countryside.
Next, he wanted to make some more animal friends by visiting the Denver Zoo.
He wandered around quite a few of the exhibits, but one of his favorites was saying “hi” to the giraffes.
And he finished his trip by saying “hello” to all the birds. He especially liked the colorful flamingoes. Once he finished strolling around the zoo, he headed home. He definitely wants to visit again sometime, perhaps when there’s snow on the ground?
“Toby Flenderson” is the fifteenth portrait in my series inspired by The Office, and I was surprised how easy it was to piece this one together, especially after my last one was a bit of a struggle. Sometimes you have good days and bad days with art. And sometimes you have a piece that’s a struggle while other times you have one that flows together well.
I’m beginning to think about what my next series will be. I’m thinking I may do a portrait series that involves fewer portraits than this one so that I can finish it a little quicker than it took me to work on this one. We shall see…
I cant’ believe I’m up to portrait number fourteen in my series inspired by The Office. “Karen Filippelli” was a rather difficult piece to tackle since my initial sketch was a little too rough. It’s definitely helpful when the initial sketch is more accurate. Otherwise, I end up spending even more time trying to reshape various features of the figure’s face.
Regardless of how much of a struggle this one was, I’m looking forward to continuing the next few pieces in this series. I have about four left that I’d like to work on before shifting gears and starting a new portrait series.