Lost -- In Progress

She isn't finished, but this is how I spent my afternoon.

Actually, it started last night, when I wasn't sleeping. I mentioned in a previous post that I had been painting on an old canvas. I turned out a beautiful pastel background with a piece of pattern tissue paper across it, and thought that I wanted to transfer the focal image onto it, instead of collaging it. I sought help from trusted art types and jumped right in. I decided to do an inkjet transfer, for the first time, onto this lovely background. After finding instructions on the Inkjet Transfers Yahoo group, I proceeded not to follow them very well, and did my first inkjet transfer! It was much easier than I expected, so I'll be trying it again, but my results were horrible ... Not just because I didn't follow directions, either! I didn't have the brand of transparencies recommended. That may not be a totally big deal, but the directions specifically say not to use QUICK DRYING transparencies; I suspect that mine were quick drying but didn't advertise themselves as such. Another problem I had was finding something to support my canvas as I burnished the transparency. I was working on an 8x8 canvas that is gallery wrapped, so the opening in the back is about 4x4 -- not even big enough to fill up with CD cases! I ended up folding paper lunch sacks and stuffing them in the back. They didn't really offer the kind of support that I suspect one needs.

So, what did I do with my horrible mess? I gesso'd over it and started over! I used the same colors (I'm pretty sure the pink is the same; I know the other two are) and the same techniques, and it came out different! Perhaps, in my impatience, I didn't let things dry well enough before moving on to the next layer. I decided to collage an image instead of trying to transfer again. I just didn't have the patience to try to overcome the support problem. I could have tried a caulk transfer, as someone suggested, but by now I was just ready to move on. A caulk transfer takes about 24 hours! I ended up changing focal images, too. The original image was much too square to collage onto the background. I'm much happier with this image, even though I like the original (lost) background better.

She's in progress -- so how am I going to finish her? I think I'm going to print "Lost" on a transparency, cut it out and sew it onto the upper left hand corner. I thought about transferring it, but I'm too far into the piece for experimentation of that sort! I'll also look for a ribbon or piece of lace to put along the bottom, so that she doesn't look as though she's floating in air.

I have two more canvases to play with, and I'm eager to get to them!