Revisiting Past Work -- Thoughts On My Process

I was recently asked to post a little bit about my process. I love this piece, even though it didn't get juried into the recent Multi-Media Mini Show, so I thought I'd talk a little bit about it.

This is basically four dress forms, painted and collaged, then sewn around. The dress forms are a mixture of vellum and transparencies. The stitching is strictly decorative; it doesn't do anything to hold the piece together. At each corner of each dress form, I used my crop-o-dile (love that tool!) to first punch holes, then set eyelets. I then used small nails to attach the forms to the blue background.

The blue background is simply plywood, cut to size on my recently acquired table saw. The the front is covered in GAC-100 and sandable gesso (both Golden's products). The blue is not paint, but Portfolio brand water-soluble oil pastels, put on pretty heavily and then smoothed out with a wet paintbrush. Once it was dry, the blue background was covered with Polymer Medium (Gloss). That background is glued to the larger black background, that was treated in the same manner.

I loved making this piece, because it was pretty different from what I usually do. I don't usually work on wood, but I really enjoyed the challenge of approaching a new substrate. I plan to do more pieces like this!