Collage, Comics and Books

My friend Benn recently commented that I don’t post very often to this blog. Absolutely true! Thinking about it, I can see that I tend to post after I’ve completed some work. Lately, I’ve been working at the PC and in collage.

I spent a day in the studio with my friend Laura who was visiting. We did collages. Laura had a theme she wanted to explore. I worked free-form from magazines in the moment, with just a few ‘on hand’ images. I like to do this every now and then, working without concept and responding to the images as they arise. This collage includes the iconic portrait from National Geographic. The abstract detail pieces are torn from photos of Mayan stone walls.

Following that flow at last month’s Art Girrls Day, I also worked in collage. This time I used a flawed proof copy of a photo book I worked with Helen on that we created with her son’s photography. It was a perfect background for another free-form collage. This time I used more ‘on-hand’ images from my ongoing pile, with a few in-the-moment magazine entries as well.

I then made a fun graphic novel comic book for my son Alexander’s birthday. A friend told me about a super, easy-to-use software that takes your images and gives you comic-style layouts and many super comic effects. I took a slew of pictures at my son’s house of all his collections and strange art. The story in the comic was centered on how all the things in his house speak to him, but he’s not sure what they say. It was a great, fun project. You can try the software free for 30 days. www.plasq.com

And just this morning, I ordered the proof copy of what I hope is the final version of Aspect Art – Art As the Soul’s Journey. This book is about my work with my friend Helen on what we call Aspect Art – exploring the facets or ‘aspects’ of your life through art. We actually began the book last year but after a bit and the first layout, I just hit a creative stall. Message from the universe – put this aside for awhile. Just recently I simply woke up ready to get back to the book after several months of hiatus. I had been having technical problems with the color saturation of the page backgrounds, when Dennis said, ‘Well, why don’t you just try a white background and just let the art be the color?’ Well, of course, that was the needed element to move things and everything just came together. It aligned so well, that after I submitted the first final version, Helen sent some pictures of recent work and I realized this just had to be included in the book. So pages were added, things updated and the 2^nd ‘final’ version was uploaded to Amazon.

By the way, Amazon’s program, Createspace, is a great way to produce quality print-on-demand product and sell it on Amazon.com I use Lulu for my initial production and then switch to Createspace. If you want any print-on-demand mentoring, just email and I’ll be happy to share my experiences. Aspect art has it’s own mini-web site as www.aspexart.com

So when I’m not here, blogging, you know I’m out there 'doing'.