Monday 26 July 2010

Quilt block collage


This morning when the house was quiet and my first cuppa was brewing, I brainstormed a list of possible projects for the coming weeks. A little later, as I was sipping my tea and pondering the list, along comes Miss Muse and starts urging me to "forget about painting for today, try some of that quilt block collage thing using magazine pages!"

Now, if there's one thing I've learned from my exile in the creative wilderness, it's that I have to pay attention to Miss Muse when she starts spouting off because if I ignore her she'll stomp off in a huff and God knows when she'll be back.

So this is today's spread of experiments and notes in my big catch-all sketchbook. The collages are a bit dark because of the papers I happened to tear out. Next time I would balance the monochromes with more brights. I enjoyed using the cheap and pretty papers as fabrics, which I trimmed, cut into neat squares and triangles, and stacked across the top of my desk for arranging into patterns.

Inspirations: quilt blocks, primitive art, geometry, jewellery, mandalas.

Variations:
1. Work one block very large to give more scope for layering colour, pattern, and texture.
2. Add paint, ink, pen.
3. If working in quilt block mode, make a new block for each layer of collage. Then mount the blocks in sequence of either construction or deconstruction---or both.

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