June 2, 2011: In the introduction to my Mixed Media & Built Surface class our instructor Jeanne commented, “If you are hoping to produce a masterpiece then in you’re in the wrong class. This class is all about fun…”
The first class focused on transfers of images, a tad gimmicky, but all I really need to do is to get my hands dirty, and they definitely got dirty!
(NEXT CLASS RE: gimmicky: in our second class Jeanne showed some decidedly ungimmicky painters who use a lot of image transfer in their work. One such artist is Robert Rauschenberg: http://www.google.ca/searc h?q=robert+rauschenberg&hl =en&biw=1252&bih=940&prmd= ivnso&tbm=isch&tbo=u&sourc e=univ&sa=X&ei=-mv1TaLsHrH ViAKYuID7Bg&ved=0CDUQsAQ). After looking through their work I realized that it was me that was using transfers in a gimmicky way.)
Many of the images I brought had too much gray in them; only the hi-contrast black and white images worked really well for transfers. Here are some that I ended up using:
El Jefe, the huge, ancient, and somewhat battered iguana that lived next door to us at Melvin’s in Ostional, Costa Rica. I turned the photo of him into a high-contrast image suitable for transfer
scribbles created while trying to clean my plotting pens
transfer of Indian holyman blessing onto painted canvas board
wood grain image transferred (badly) onto stained wood panel
How to Transfer an Image to a Surface, Method No. 1
Our super instructor’s site: http://jeannekrabbendam.com/ On her site she has her work and offers lots of different workshops and courses.