Saturday, November 15, 2014

A storm in the studio

A niece of mine works for a paper factory and often gets to keep remnants from her work. She generously shares these papers with her friends and family and since she knows I'm the creative type I am one of the lucky recipients!

Not long ago she gifted me a big pack of large size papers. The only downside (if you want to call it that) is that the paper is lilac in colour. But hey, I'm the creative type and I own gesso, so who cares?
The paper is beautifully thick (cardstock quality) and handles wonderfully, so I'm very pleased with it.

Sometimes I use it underneath my work to protect the surface of my table, sometimes I tear it up in pieces and sometimes something like this happens:


I had originally intended to just do a big abstract background with colours and shapes and then cut it into pieces to form the base for smaller abstracts. But while I was working on it the shapes reminded me of leaves and flowers blowing in the wind. And then before I knew it this piece became about an autumn storm! So I started working with that, adding the lettering and details. 

I like how the muse works like that sometimes, if you're willing to go with it that is. I rarely work this big, but I did enjoy the process very much. I'm very much a believer in doing the work and showing up and not waiting for inspiration, but sometimes inspiration is handed to you on a platter!

Here are some details of the work:







I'm quite taken with it!

Of course I could no longer bear to cut it up now, so instead I took a truckload (as in dozens and dozens) of close up pictures to serve as a base for abstracts at some future point. That way I still had fulfilled my original purpose. ;-)

Hope you are all visited by a stormy muse sometimes and wishing you a wonderful and artsy day!