My post today is one of those things that I have to consider to be a happy accident. I made it with what I thought was probably garbage. The basis, the background of the whole collage, is sheet of watercolor paper, that I painted using dark blue fountain pen ink.
The way it dried is just so nice on it’s own, but I thought that I wanted to do something with it. I stashed it in a drawer with decorative papers, since it’s been sitting since last month. Like so many piece nowadays, it started just testing some materials out. In this case, I actually thought it was a failure. Originally, the face shared the page with some sort of plant that I clearly messed up. But there was something about the face that I did like. I kept it out on the desk for a couple of days, wondering whether or not to scrap it.
Then one morning last week, I thought about the page of blue ink. I could just cut the figure out, I thought, and make it a collage. I immediately liked the idea. It only took a few minutes to draw a figure around the face, cut it out, and paste it on top. Figuring out what else to add and where had been a fun challenge in the mornings since.
The flowers and vines are purely fantasy, I don’t think that anything like them grow anywhere. I decided early on that this was called The Blue Hour, and was meant to represent the colors and mood of twilight. I want to do more, similar pieces for different times of day. I’ve even jotted them down in pencil on the back of this piece so that I don’t forget. In the meantime though, I’m busy with greeting cards and putting the finishing touches on this one!