Skip to main content

cheater art

I got a call yesterday from someone requesting that I donate some art for a silent auction to benefit the local hospice program. How could I refuse since the hospice program has been such a benefit to us with what has been going on lately with my grandma.

I messed with an art idea yesterday that had been on my mind to try but still didn't come up with anything appropriate for their "spring tea" benefit luncheon being held tomorrow afternoon. I was awake this morning at 4 am so I decided to try again and throw together something a bit more tea partyish.

I put a "borrowed" photo through a bit of digital manipulation to make it little less photolike and then made a mask from the outline of the photo printed onto regular copy paper and adhered that onto watercolor paper cut to 5"x7". I then rubbed in powdered pigments all around the masked area and sealed that with matte acrylic. I flipped the photo in the program I was using (Illustrator), printed it onto a transparency sheet, removed the masking from the watercolor paper, rolled hand sanitizer over the background and placed the printed transparency face down and ran both through my etching press. After a couple of minutes I removed the transparency, let it dry, added a few more pigments and sprayed again with matte acrylic. It was super fast and looks more in keeping with their theme but I can't get past thinking that using photo transfers is really a lot like cheating. Maybe if I had done more to make it my own art (like using a photo I'd taken or adding more details and layers) I wouldn't feel so uncomfortable about it. If only I'd had more time.

Comments

marianne said…
hi laurie! i like it- and no one would have ever done this the way you did- or even come up with the same idea- it is art, and it's your art......

i do know what you mean about the pics, tho. i have a very hard time using anything other than my own photos, even though i see lots of art i like where people use free domain stuff.
March 14, 2009 at 12:39 PM
Leau said…
Fabu! And what a great description of the process. Even I could follow that. Only you would have thought of doing it in just that order. smoooches
March 16, 2009 at 7:06 PM
Laurie said…
Thanks Marianne and Leau -- you guys are always so encouraging. :)
March 19, 2009 at 12:41 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

the grand duke of hop canyon

. Two o’clock this morning I was awake and afraid to go out of my bedroom because of not knowing whether my dog, Duke, would still be breathing or not. Jimmy was sleeping on the couch in the living room to be near him, just in case. He’s been in and out of the dog hospital the past couple weeks while they tried to figure out what was going on with him and they decided on Monday that a cancerous tumor on his spleen was causing his declining health. Actually, he was in pretty serious condition when he went back to the vet’s office this past Saturday. I’ve been grieving since then and I guess I’m weary of the pain. The pain of grief is odd – it seems to rise to the surface and be multiplied by each loss that is experienced. I think partly because it is simply a reminder of other losses but also each loss has some regrets associated with it and each loss permanently removes a blessing and a joy of some kind from our lives that we must learn to do without. And then once you’ve experienced...
6 comments
Read more

Jimmy the jewelry maker?

Jimmy's been interested in working with metal and learning how to make some unusual jewelry with some of the odd bits and pieces he can get out of the trash at his job. Because they do some one of a kind sort of things in the machine shop, they also produce some one of a kind, kinda trash. Today he took some old turquoise beads that we had and some of the copper glob bits that he had brought home from work and made quite a lovely pendant, in my opinion. I don't think he's wondering anymore what he might like to try doing when he retires. :)
3 comments
Read more