Fun Creating....

Collage, Abstract painting, drawing, stamping, stenciling... so many techniques and so much fun!   I have been so very inspired by Jane Davies blog, Collage Journeys. over the last few months... the abstract colors and textures of paint and collage and various techniques used together in a piece of art is so exciting to see.  I watch her many demo videos and  I've been wanting to create things like this, but don't quite know how to go about it.  I figured out, that you just have to dive in and try something, and go from there.  It's freeing, because there's no right or wrong in the beginning... you can just watch what happens as you create.  Then as you go along, ideas start to come, and things evolve. 
Recently Jane posted a fun challenge on her blog, encouraging anyone who wanted to try, to create a piece of abstract art, with whatever techniques they wished, and then, divide the piece into 4 smaller post card sized pieces, to see how each one comes out looking!
I started by using my Gelli printing plate to make some interesting and colorful designs on my paper that I could use to build on.  I got carried away making print after print, it's addicting!!!  But, I picked out a couple to add other techniques on top of.
The first one I worked on, I was too aware of the end result of dividing the piece in 4, and wound up focusing on each quadrant too individually.   I think now, I put too much into it...maybe less is more... It still was fun to do, and I like how it came out, because I've never make anything like this before!  And a couple of  the cropped out sections look really interesting to me!

work in progress pic

finished

cropped section

another cropped section

Over the next few days, when I had time, I worked on them again.  I thought I had a favorite, until one night, I decided to do something different,  and just started painting with a few selected colors on a white sheet.  Then I added pieces of collage paper, and stenciled and stamped, and painted a bit more until I was satisfied with it.    I found I liked it best upright, but it doesn't really have a right side up. It's  8.5 x 11 inches.

 It was fun to discover what it looked like cropped into 4 sections...  the challenge was to make them so they didn't look like they came from the same piece.  These look to me like they are all from the same piece. 

I made a few pieces, and they all came out so differently, so exciting to see! 
It was great fun to do, playful, relaxing and enjoyable.
I made many pictures... here are a few:

stenciling over gelli print.  I also made the stencils, I traced the design, and cut from clear page protectors. 

This one started from a page of paper I had been rolling excess paint off my brayer.  I added to it, and  the sections of this one seem to look more like they didn't all come from the same piece. The stamp in this piece was made from the stencil of the same design.  I traced the shape on fun foam and cut it out, and glued the shapes to a piece of white foam board.  The red piece of collage paper had been imprinted with plastic wrap in the wet paint.

Below is a previous picture of the work above, on the right side.   The page on the left, started the same, with excess roller paint, rolled off, and I added a scribble of blue w/c crayon and brushed water to blend.  It's fun to see how unintentional things you do happen to catch your eye.

This is another full page, 8.5x11 card stock..  I'm not sure how I started this one, but, it has a bit of stamping, stencil and the red I painted on with my finger.  Below, are cropped sections.

 

 

 

 

 And here are a few others I thought were interesting...

A Gelli print, printed in 2 layers. A violet and blue layer, combed through.. and a yellow layer.. the yellow paint was dribbled onto the plate and rolled through and repeated sparingly.
And a post card sized collage piece with hand painted paper and butterflies, cute!

I could go on and on, but this post is long enough!  Thank you for visiting and looking at my art work!