Amber Gibbs - Art Journals, Collage Art & Mixed Media Adventures

Tiny Bird Art

I used these pendant collage sheets by Alpha Stamps to make these inchies (1" square tiles). I know birds are "so 2007" but whatever, I like them. My motto these days is that I only make art for ME. So yeah, BIRDS.

Jilted Anatomy - New Painting

New Painting - well, kind of new. I finally finished this one. I started it last August.

Goodbye Summer

Goodbye Summer, how little we knew ye (this year).

Usually I look forward to Autumn. October has both our wedding anniversary and my birthday. And then there is Thanksgiving and Christmas to look forward to. I love the crispness of the air, the pretty colored leaves . . .

But this year I am really going to miss summer. We didn't really see summer until the first of July. Usually June is a mixed bag, with some rain and some sun. Mostly this year it was rain, after a long hard winter it seemed like summer was a long time coming.

Kavya is just beginning to walk, taking her first few tentative steps. In a few weeks, I think, she will be walking. And then it will be mostly raining. I'd love for her to be tottering around in soft grass and there is another reason I will miss summer.

This is the last page in my art journal - tho I'm not done with that journal yet because I skip around and do pages in sections as I feel like it. Seems fitting for this goodbye to summer entry tho!

September Weddings, Birthdays, and Art

Oooh, I've been gone for a while - both from my art and from this blog. September was so busy for me. First my in-laws arrived and adjusting to having people in the house took a week or so. My daughter turned 1!! We had a family-only party for her.

Then one of my beautiful sisters got married. Lots of family was in town for that and I hosted several people (including my other beautiful sister). I was in the bridal party, and even the tho the bride did take it easy on me because I have a baby, I did have a lot of things to do to get ready for that.

Here's my lovely sister Beth on her wedding day:

I did finish up some journal pages at the beginning of September.

This was an experiment of layers. I kept drawing and adding to it - paint, ink, collage. Eventually it was just too much, so I ripped off a few of the collage elements. The result reminded me of a building, so I added the church overlay.

Here is a closeup so you can see the detail:

Jointed: Ambiguous Angels

Tricia Anders created a Flickr group called Jointed to highlight collaborative art pieces. And then she hosted a project where she created an drawing and asked artists to finish it.

Above is my piece. I had more of her sketch in the work, but as I kept reworking and adding to it, most of her work is obscured. Perhaps I am not the best person to do collaborative projects! The faces are her work.

This piece actually has about 10 layers. Something for future art historians to discover in x-rays. Hahaha.

Layers:

• Collaged Ephemera
• Red acrylic glaze over that
• Face with a tree thing, totally not working. Then about 2 years of "rest"
• black and white collage of buildings/angels and birds. The composition was really lovely and I should have left it alone
• then I added some color to it and ruined it
• I added Tricia's faces and body parts to it
• Then I outlined and added sketches with pen and ink
• Then I used a lot of black paint to unify it
• and then some more white paint to bring out the specific areas

The end.

Well, not really. I'm not sure I'm satisfied with this yet. Frankly I'm happy when I get some time to make art.

Bubble Pop Girl

Sometimes you just make something and it clicks "This is IT!" That is how I feel about this painting. This is the direction I want to go in. This is ME. I had so much fun in EVERY part of the creating process.

After the Jesse Reno workshop, when I had time, I'd do a little painting. But it got to the point where I was frustrated. It seemed what was coming out wasn't me. And I really needed a big chunk of time to set up all the paint stuff and paint. And a big place. Ideally, that would be my studio, but I'm in the middle of cleaning it and it is upstairs where it is HOT this time of year and also far away from the baby. I painted outside on the deck, but that wasn't ideal.

I also missed collage. I find cutting things up and pasting them down ridiculously relaxing. And a few weeks ago, I needed to relax and create so I started to collage on a bunch of small canvases that I have. I tried to follow what I learned in the Jesse Reno class, primarily don't overthink things! And this is the best result from those sessions.

My real fear is that I won't be able to recreate this style. But I love that I finally made something that feels like ME

Details:

Title: Bubble Pop Girl

Size: 8 by 10 inches

on Gallery wrapped canvas

Art History - My Own

I'm looking back through some old art files that are burned to CD. My purpose is to find some art work that I can 'leverage' into new artwork - print it out and change it/collage it into new stuff. But I find I've become fascinated just by looking back. Some of it I hate and some of it I love. I hate the stuff that looks like what everyone else was doing and I love the stuff that looks different. Yeah, there's a lesson there.

And then there is some stuff I don't remember at all.

For example:

The file name is "Thank you" - I have no idea what this was for except maybe thank you cards, but for what? It's definitely a digital image from artwork I made.

I think this is the source for the female face:

This page was for a color themed art journal swap.

Here's an art stamp I made by collaging over a real stamp:

Meeting on the Water

Tada! The first painting I completed after the workshop, using the techniques I learned. I painted over an old painting that wasn't working, so I had a lot of texture and collage elements mixed in. Adding a paper collage background wasn't something covered in Jesse Reno's class, but something I learned from years of collaging and also from Ann Grgich's class. Having a paper background changes the texture on canvas, making it almost like painting on wood.

Details:
12" by 12" on Canvas
Medium: Paper, acrylic paint, ink, and oil pastels
Title: Meeting on the Water
Date: July 2008

More Jesse Reno Workshop Stuff

A few other people have written up reviews of the Jesse Reno workshop

Judy Wise

Kim Carney

Jesse Reno Workshop

On Saturday, I was able to attend a painting class with Jesse Reno. His style is intuitive, primitive, outsider with layers of painting and meaning. I've admired his work for years and when Nikki Blackwood organized a workshop with him, I jumped at the chance to take it. During last couple of weeks, I was wondering why I even was going - I am not painting anymore and with work and the baby, when would I have time to paint again? But it was worth it and I need to carve out some time to paint

All of the pictures will appear bigger if you click on them, that way you can see more detail.

A stack of his finished work:

Jesse paints a lot with his hands, which really frees one up. He also works without a plan, which for me is a very hard thing to do. But everytime I do it, my work is that much better.

Here he is starting a painting. I wish I'd gotten a picture of how much this changed, but I am a dork and my camera sucks so this is what I got. Other people in the class were taking pictures too, so I am sure there will be some blog posts with more before and after.

I did get some before and after shots of another painting he worked on throughout the day.

This is how it looked when he brought it to the class:

This was one of 3 or 4 paintings he worked on at a time. How it looked at the end of the day:

This is how my hand looked after about 20 minutes of painting:

My sister Beth smooshing paint around with her hands:

Beth and I switched paintings several times. If one of us was not happy with the direction, we gave the painting to the other one. For some reason, it's actually easier to paint over someone else's work than it is my own.

On the right, is my favorite painting I did that day, in progress. (The boards on the left are by Katie Kendrick.) Beth actually started this board, but was not pleased with it at all. By the end of the day, she ended up with the smaller boards and I had the two huge boards. I love to work large.

Same painting at the end of the day:

And a detail:

In the foreground of this picture is the other large painting I started:

And later in the day. I'm not sure if that face is right.

I took after photos only of my sister Beth's work.

Work by Beth Gibbs

I did all of the 'painting' on this board, but Beth had the vision to see what was actually there (the house).

 
And here is the only photo I took of other people's artwork. I thought I'd taken more, but evidently not. I was up from 6AM (hello Kavya!) and had only gotten about 6 hours of sleep before. Tho today I am feeling much worse and crankier even tho I got a lot of sleep last night and she woke up at 7AM today (tho she woke up and fussed for a minute at 1AM, 4AM, and 5AM).

The horse painting on the left is by Stephanie Brockway and the rest is by Judy Wise

Things I learned and what I want to remember:

• I need to paint. I don't know how I'll squeeze it in, but I have to
• Painting large rocks.
• Working intuitively instead of massive planning is more interesting and yields better results for me.

And that's it in a nutshell. It was a great class and a good day.