Another day, another doggie collage.
Lately I’ve been dabbling with some film work – figuring out how to work with editing, lighting, etc. Perhaps sometime in the future I’ll tackle a few collage-related film pieces. We shall see…
Anyway, I hope everyone is having a glorious week – and happy-almost-Friday!
And here’s the completed collage. The other day I got started on another portrait collage which is coming along nicely – I’m hoping to take more progress pictures of it than I did with this one.
Also, recently I heard that several of my animal collages were accepted into a group juried exhibition in North Carolina. It looks like I’ll have another road trip fairly soon. Bosty might even tag along.
I decided to put together another abstract landscape collage today. It’s really nice to change up my technique to make these – they’re pretty fun to do. Usually I focus a lot of time on little details, and it’s nice to cut loose and just focus on color and texture while tearing paper instead of cutting it.
I’m still working away as usual. March has been a quiet month for my blog – I hope to post more next month. I’m striving to finish a couple large projects relatively soon, so once they’re completed that should free up my schedule a bit. Anyway, I’m off to work on some more illustrations.
Another experimental piece of mine. It’s fun trying something new, although I must admit, I enjoy my usual style of “painting with paper” much better than creating abstract pieces. However, it is pretty therapeutic putting together torn bits of paper.
I set my children’s book illustrations aside for a couple of weeks, but I’m back to working on them. And I’ve started planning an educational section that I’ll add to my website sometime in the future. I get emails from teachers every once in a while who use my artwork in their classrooms, and I thought it might be nice to put something together that could help them with their lesson plans.
Anyway, hope everyone is having a great weekend!
Every now and then I’ll do some planning for my workshop in Jasper, Indiana. I like taking my time when it comes to planning for exhibitions and lectures, so that way I can ensure everything is taken care of and that I’m well prepared. So bit by bit I’ve been working on examples that I’ll share with the class.
Above is another experimental piece. Again it looks much different than any of my other work. This is more like playing with the materials and seeing what results I can get. It also helps me think about what projects I can have for the class. This piece is an abstract landscape made entirely from tearing magazine strips. You can see that some of the pieces have more obvious tears while others are pretty subtle.
I like the story behind this collage: Recently the guy who owns the domain megancoyle.com contacted me. I wanted that domain when I first put my website together, but had to settle with megancoyle.com since another Megan Coyle had a site up and running on megancoyle.com. So the owner contacted me, telling me that his client, another Megan, no longer used her website. Thus the web address wasn’t being used and was pointing to an error page, although the owner was still paying money for the domain. So he offered to do a trade – he’d transfer the domain to my account if I made a collage for him.
Above is the collage that I made for him. The challenge with this piece was that it was one of my smaller sized collages, and I wasn’t doing a portrait of one, but two people. I had to cut the magazine strips pretty small, but I’m pleased that it came together in the end.
These past couple of days I’ve been doing some planning for my workshop in April. Part of my prep work includes coming up with projects that the class will work on and creating my own samples to share with the students. I’ve decided that one technique I’ll share is creating non-objective art with magazine strips. I never create abstract pieces myself, but I decided to give it a go with this small collage.
At the moment, I’m also working on a small portrait piece. I’ll share an image of that collage once it’s complete.
Hope everyone had a happy January! Can’t believe it’s already been 2011 for a month!
And here’s the finished piece – as you can see it’s much different than the first progress picture. When my client reviewed progress images of this one, she decided she wanted Nancy wearing a dark jacket instead of blue. She also made a few suggestions here and there. Her feedback was pretty helpful with shaping this into a Nancy portrait that looks more like Nancy.
I’m kind of excited about the idea of making a series of political leader collages, especially since I live in the DC area. We shall see how that goes when I get to it…
And now I’m off to work on my children’s book illustrations as well as another portrait for a client. It’s snowing like crazy outside – good weather for staying in and making artwork!
Here’s the finished piece. My client gave this collage to his wife as a Christmas gift. I was happy to hear that it was well received. This dog sure looked pretty cute – in all the reference photos the client sent me, Shelby had her tongue hanging out.
Anyway, I’m off to enjoy the weekend. I’m going to work away on my children’s book illustrations – and I must say, it’s pretty difficult being secretive about my book since I’m so used to sharing my progress pictures, etc. The only image from the project I plan to post is the cover art once I’ve finished it. I’m half-way done with the book – can’t wait until it’s finished and ready for print. I’m excited to share it – even though it’s got a ways to go.
“Claire” is a commissioned portrait that I recently completed and shipped over to a woman in Texas. I have a couple of other commissions at the moment that are going to be given as Christmas gifts by my clients. Thus I’ll refrain from posting images of these projects until the holiday season has passed.
I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving weekend. Mine was filled with family get-togethers and lots and lots of food. I didn’t bother with shopping on Black Friday – I think I’ll finish my shopping online so I can avoid the crowds. Anyway, I’m off to try and finish another commission – I’ve decided I won’t work too much on my personal projects until these commission are complete, however I’m anxious to get back to my children’s book illustrations.
Have a great end of November!