This week I ended up focusing primarily on collaging images together and I’m really liking how they’re turning out. I’ve been finding with my painted photos that they can feel redundant and nothing new is really happening with it. To get out of that, I thought I might expand my methods in how I am making the images. The images I am collaging come from my everyday work life and Colorado. The images from Colorado are also further edited, seeming almost surreal/unreal, similar to how my own memory is perceiving that trip.
This week, I started with the idea of again combing the two places of my work and Colorado, but as the says went on, I found myself going back more to what I was doing before. I was ultimately inspired by the barred window study in my sketchbook to take that similar idea of the drips with some sort of barrier, but enlarge it (in this case, on a 16 in x 24 in canvas). This was also a good chance for me to experiment again with transferring images on a larger scale. Let me just say right now, rubbing off images that large takes a lot longer than I anticipated (like 2 hours per canvas). I also tried then working on top of the transferred image (unfortunately it was still damp when I did that so it turned out a bit splotchy)
Because of the weirdly, and uncomfortably warm weather my fiancé and I have been able to go up to our property more often. This week I have been reflecting on my notes that people had left for me and one suggestion was to draw and create sites from Kingston. I just can’t. When I paint my property and photograph my property I’m excited, it’s enjoyable to me. When thinking about painting my school environment it literally makes me sick to my stomach. 
This past week I was in Colorado on vacation and also searching out possibly moving out there, looking at different towns, cities, and neighborhoods. Being away, I was not able to bring all of my materials with me- rather I only had my laptop with me, so my works this week are all digital. As I went around different parts of Colorado, I documented everything around me and consistently found myself comparing it to everything back in New York and also felt an escape from the everyday chaos I feel, whether it is at work, driving to/from work, or everyday life. While I may not be looking forward to actually going back to work this coming week, I really look forward to see what kind of artwork comes out of my feelings of being back and remembering the feeling of calm/peace I felt while I was away.
This first one was done on the plane ride to Colorado- I thought I was simply playing around with different Photoshop tools, but looking at it closer, it definitely tells the viewer how I feel about the place I currently am at.
With this one, I wanted to try the same type of broad paint strokes I did before (similar to ) but rather than do it on top of the image, I wanted to print the image on top of it this was also a way for me to test out how well printed images can turn out on an acrylic painted surface.
Photo Transfers
Transfer on acrylic painted canvas
Transfer on raw canvas
Transfer on gessoed/primed canvas
I have continued my studies with the encaustic wax and pastels. The last layer of my work will end with the step that is seen in the image above. I intend to carve into the wax, and then proceed to add oil paint on top of the carving. The image added is just an image of the carving process. It is very similar to removing ink off a plate for etching in printmaking. I have been using the same image just for my study pieces, but I intend on having final pieces possess two images juxtaposed.
This week has been distracting and packed with School related things, I had a pre-observation, my observation, and about five other meetings and a constant round of TBA’ing. However, I am really enjoying these small works of art and adding small white details to the pre existing ink that I had. I did about one-two per night and this upcoming week I am going to add another layer of ink and try using pastel over it to out a dusty color for some of the work.
This past week was a weird week as I was out one day incredibly sick and then had a snow day on Thursday (a true rarity in NYC). I found in the beginning, working again with some altered paper but as the week went on, I did more collage work. The second work, I cut out a fence that blocks my path every morning. I also got injured at work a week and a half ago from a student and wanted to try to turn my documentation of the injury into a piece itself (through digital collaging of sorts).
My latest image transfer was on the back of a drawing board that I had. I was nervous about the surface taking down the image and having it show up but it worked out pretty well. I also tried making the image larger than the standard 8.5×11 by splitting the image and making it larger. It’s a good idea in theory, but I don’t really like the line that shows up and find it pretty distracting. I’m thinking the net surface I work on will be a lighter one in color as the past two I have done have been relatively dark.
This is still exploration with encaustic. This is painting with encaustic wax. All coloration comes from the wax. I will try and finish this one to compare to the pastels.
