A collage of one of my favorite beverages of all time – coffee! I’ve mentioned before that I’m not really a fan of making still life art, but I figure it’s a good exercise to tackle an area that I’m not as familiar with. By focusing on still life objects that I enjoy in real life, I’m hoping to build this area out to other subjects in the next few months.
Anyway, I’m off to get started on a sketch for my next piece!
Here’s a study of the Washington Monument that I completed last night. As an artist living in the Washington, DC area, I’m often inspired by my surroundings. Every once in a while I’ll tackle familiar sites and landscapes when I decide to take a break from my animal or people portraits.
My next piece will most likely be another still life study. My current series of still life collages has definitely been a learning experience. I’m finding different ways to get excited about a subject matter that in the past I often tried to avoid.
Bosty was getting tired of the daily grind in DC, so he decided to spend a long weekend in Riviera Maya, Mexico. Enjoying the sun on a beach resort? Don’t mind if I do!
He liked taking advantage of room service on the resort. His favorite dish was pretty healthy – a fruit platter.
After snacking, Bosty would go for a quick walk along the beach. Sometimes he would sprawl out on one of the beach chairs and sun bathe.
He loved all the palm trees and the beautiful landscape. We lucked out and had some great weather – so we could take advantage of admiring our surroundings.
When Bosty wasn’t in the mood for sun bathing or strolling down the beach, he did some cloud watching. What do those clouds in the distance look like to you, Bosty?
After our stay, he was disappointed about leaving paradise. But don’t worry Bosty, we’ll have another great adventure sometime soon.
This is a quick still life study that I completed the other night. As I continue to complete these smaller pieces, I’m going to start exploring more complex compositions. Right now I’m just focusing on practicing still life collages. Hope to create more of these soon.
This week I heard from Elizabeth Crites, a teacher from Ohio. She contacted me to see if she could send me images of her student work. Her 7th grade students worked on a “painting with paper” project where they looked at images and videos of my artwork. Then they brought in pictures of their pets, or if they didn’t have pets they made collages of other animals, and completed their own “painting with paper” works of art.
Here are some of their wildlife animal collages:
And here are images of the pet collages:
It’s wonderful to see the work of young artists. Elizabeth’s students did a great job – and it’s fun seeing how each student had his or her own style.
Still life is definitely my least favorite subject to collage. So I figured, why not explore a still life series? I’m hoping to get more excited about still life as I experiment with different subject matter in the genre. This piece was meant to just be a simple collage that can hopefully get the ball rolling with this new project.
It’s been a while since Bosty traveled to Chicago, so he thought another visit was long overdue. Time to take in the sights and take plenty of pictures of that Chicago skyline!
He started the day off by getting one of the Divvy city bike shares so he could bike around the city.
And take a look at some of the area’s art, like the print of Julie Murphy’s Bunny Snail featured on a street station sign.
He especially liked Steinunn Thorarinsdottir’s “Borders” sculptures. Looks like he was trying to get between these two.
After wandering around the city for a couple of hours, he decided to take a break and savor some local food. We stopped by Eleven City Diner for a quick lunch.
Bosty just had to order a pastrami and corned beef sandwich. How about a nice towering sandwich for lunch? Don’t mind if I do!
Once we finished our delicious lunch, we headed to the convention center so Bosty could enjoy the wonders of being part of the Comic Expo. He even had his Darth Vader mask handy to wear for the occasion. He liked playing doggy Darth Vader for a while.
All the excitement from the convention center, seeing lots of other comic costumes, made Bosty work up another appetite. So we stopped by Blackbird for some arctic char.
Next up, we did some more city wandering. Bosty loved checking out the street art. He was amused by this wall art that featured a man with a nervous look on his face while trying to catch pigeons with a net.
To complete our day of walking, we checked out the Chicago Riverwalk.
And spent some time strolling around the various parks. Bosty pointed out these colorful signs sponsored by the Morton Arboretum. Thanks Morton Arboretum for reminding us that trees surround us in beauty!
Bosty was pretty excited about our dinner plans. He felt like one incredibly cultured doggy after experiencing the fine dining cuisine at Alinea. His favorite dish was the dessert they prepped right on the table.
With a full belly, we made our way to Buddy Guy’s Legends for some live blues music. Bosty felt like we had one incredible Chicago experience. Although, he had to point out, we made a big mistake by not having any Chicago dogs or deep dish pizza.
Don’t worry Bosty, we’ll do that the next time we visit.
This is another collage inspired by the National Zoo in Washington, DC – which is one of my favorite places to visit to gather inspiration for future works of art. I’m hoping to get started on a still life collage in the next couple of weeks, but I suppose I tend to procrastinate when it comes to still life work. I was about to get started on one but then fell into making this hermit crab collage. What can I say? I really enjoy making collages of different animals. Animals are just too fascinating – so much color and variety.
On Twitter I found out about a class from Germantown Academy in Washington, Pennsylvania who studied Romare Bearden’s artwork as well as my collage work, and then made their own “painting with paper” collages. When I saw images of the students’ work, I just had to share them! I am pretty impressed by what this class of 4th graders came up with. Here are a few from the class:
The students worked with magazine cut-outs to make the animals and paint for the background.
It’s wonderful inspiring others, and it’s also wonderful seeing what young artists are capable of creating.
Here’s an image of the flamingo collage from my time lapse video. It’s not very common for me to finish a collage all in one sitting, but that’s what I did with this one. Looks like filming the entire process kept me on track. I’ll have to experiment with some more videos of my collages in the future.