The Struggle (7.28.2016)

The title of this page is a direct reference to the making of it.

This was a work and progress over a series of days, and it fought me every step of the way. I'm still not completely happy with the way it turned out, but I decided to call it done. I also heavily considered not sharing it at all, but there are a few small bits that stood out to me as being nice, and I also wanted to show that everyone struggles sometimes.

However, even with the chaos  of the page, there are a few parts that I do like. That's what I keep trying to focus on, and it has helped significantly.

• First and foremost, on the left, you can see the section on the bottom, where a bit of collage work, green and blue paint, and doodles done in pen show through. As I was proceeding through the layers that followed, I took special care to keep this section intact.
• On the right, you can see a bit where I did some stitching with thread. Also in this photo you can see multiple layers of paint, stenciling, stamping and collage. As you can see, I was struggling to find something that worked. If this photograph alone was the entire piece, I would be incredibly happy with it.

In the end, we all struggle. Sometimes there's nothing we can do to avoid it, and everything seems to be working against us. The best we can do is push through and focus on the good things. I hope you all got something out of this, and I'll talk to you soon.

A Fresh Start (7.26.2016)

Before I get into the actual art, a bit of a note about the World of Immensum. 

Even though all of my more formal artwork all takes place in the same world, my mixed media is more of place for me to play with ideas and techniques - they don't have specific ideas in mind, but they can inspire ideas. With that being said, until I figure out a way to share the stories that come up from this sort of mixed media, I will be focusing on the latter.

Now, without further ado, the art journal awaits!

In order to kick this project off strong, I decided to begin a new journal. 

This is the cover page, which I always love to start with before moving on to the actual pages. For a lot of people, the complete opposite is the case - they like to finish their entire journal before polishing the whole thing off by completing the covers. Either way is fine, this is just the way I like to do it. 

These pictures show a lot of the finer details/my favorite bits of this particular cover.

• In the left hand photo, you can see a lot of the texture that I got from my stamped title piece. I used foam stamps and a mixture of red and brown acrylic paint. Then I simply loaded it on and allowed it to dry. I also love where the tiny bit of the butterfly wing overlaps with said title piece.
• On the right, there are a lot of things going on that I love. The thing that sticks out to me the most though is the patterned piece of tissue paper that is pretty much front and center. I've been hoarding it for a long while now, because I found it almost too pretty to use. However, I finally broke, and I'm glad that I did as it fits perfectly. The horizontal brush strokes were done with a metallic paint that I adore.

This is the second piece that I've finished in the past few days, and I'm pretty happy with it. The idea was to work with brighter, more playful colors (thus the title), and was done in a much smaller format, on a 3x5 index card.

A big part of my style is that I don't like to be limited to any one thing, including what types of canvases or background pieces I decide to work on. This is a prime example of just that.

As you can see, the title was cut out of newspaper titles and glued down (I've collected many cut-out letters through the years and have them organized into envelopes for easier access).

With the finer details of this piece, you can see that there are some areas where I put down white paint and then proceeded to scratch it away in a circular pattern, revealing the background behind it. The drawn lines along the yellow paint marks are also incredibly appealing to me.

I tend to use a lot of paint and layers in my mixed media, and these pieces are no exception. I hope you all enjoy looking at these pieces as much as I enjoyed making them, and I look forward to hearing what you think!

Introducing - The World of Immensum + The Challenge

Immensum.

The word is Latin, and one of its several translations is "boundless extent".

That is exactly what I am trying to achieve with the World of Immensum.

The concept is simple, but hopefully intriguing to people other than just me. The idea is that every piece of art I create, everything I write or collage or compose - it all takes place in the same world. At some point on the timeline, at some place in the universe, that thing is happening (or, in the case of art, it is a representation of the things that are happening).

This blog is going to serve as a place for you to see inside of my process a little bit, but it's more than that.

In all honesty, this blog is a place to record a subset of this world - a challenge that I have set for myself.

And what is that challenge?

It is something that, in theory should be easy, but it is also a tremendous thing for me to try to undertake, due to my own struggles.

I want to create a series of paintings, collages, assemblage, and just general mixed media art pieces only from art supplies that I already own. For the people that know me, this shouldn't be too much of a problem, considering that I probably have enough art supplies to let an army build their own weapons.

However, the struggle is that I like buying art supplies.

I like experimenting with new things, I like playing with supplies I never thought I'd use in a million years, and I like the way buying new supplies makes me feel.

Because of this, I've decided that I can't go completely cold turkey, no matter how much I might want to.

So instead, I'm going to set a small budget for myself, and that budget is $25 a month. This includes any basic supplies I may have run out of, so if I want a canvas for something, it's coming out of that money.

It is accumulative, so if I decide that I want to save up for something that's $50, $75 or any other amount, I can do that. It's just longer that I can go without buying anything else.

It's definitely not going to be an easy task for me, to cut back on impulse buying so drastically.

However, some of the best contributions to creativity and innovation have come from restrictions and guidelines - that's what I'm attempting to do here. I don't know how long this self-challenge will last (but feel free to jump in yourself at any point), but I do know that I'm looking forward to sharing it with all of you.

Welcome to the World of Immensum.