My Creative Space

This week my creative space - my desk space - has been divided into 2. I spent the weekend beading, but then Tuesday evening I just had to paint. Here's a peek at my desk - my covered sewing machine in pink on the left & my painting station just out of frame to the right (I love my large desk):

This is my beading station. You can see all 3 stages of the process here. A finished product:

A work-in-progress:

And a "design board" ... or rather a soon-to-be design:

I love beading - especially the design process, sorting through beads & deciding on colour - but painting & collage have become my real outlet. Lately I've been stressing over a major decision (what to do with my life when I finish my Master's in December) so I just let it all out when I paint. The first step is particularly therapeutic:

I cover a canvas in gesso & then just write freely (& messily) in charcoal, right into the wet paint. This time it was all about making a decision & taking the plunge. It doesn't matter what I say or how it looks, because it soon gets covered up. For the next layer, I usually go straight to collage. But this time I wanted to try something different.

When the painting was almost dry, I spilled some blue watercolour onto the top left corner.

Here in the middle, you can see how the blue paint & white gesso have mixed together. I added some texture with a paper towel. Near the edges though is where the magic happened:

The watercolour sunk into all the crack of the canvas & my writing. I love how the words are highlighted.

Once that was dry, I collaged over top.

I love the complexity collage & multiple layers bring to a piece. You can look at the whole painting & see a lovely picture - but you can also look closer & pick up meaningful words & symbols, patterns & textures.

Next up for this piece is some more paint & then some inking. That will mostly complete the background & I can decide what I want to put in the foreground. I'm thinking a bird breaking free from a cage might be appropriate.

Click on over to kootoyoo to see what other creative people are up to this week.