I’ve worked on a batch of small paper collages in the studio this past week.

I enjoy these so much! I am thrilled when a collector chooses one, but I know that even if that does not occur these works are creatively good for ME.

(Which is much like the discipline of posting a blog weekly. I love the camaraderie and response from readers. But I really know that writing about artmaking on a regular basis is important for ME. It helps me to clarify my work.)

Here’s one of my recent creations: “Conversations for Morning.”

I like this composition. I think it works.

So, I want to learn from it — to be able to apply the lesson to future compositions. Here are some things I see, some guiding principles of successful design. The principles are like ABC – the building blocks one puts together to make words, which then communicate ideas.

SIZE  Something should be big. Something should be medium sized. Something should be small. I’ve got that. The big black rectangle with green branches is BIG. The birds and some of the other shapes are medium sized. The little hand drawn squares and the relief printed circles are small.

LIGHT AND DARK  Something should be dark. Something should be light. The big dark rectangle again carries the weight in value. It’s really dark. The upper right corner, and the untouched white edges around the composition provide light places.

COLOR UNITY  The colors in this work look like they belong together. They should, because they were all mixed from the same base colors. The mustard yellow top right was the starting place. That was mixed with blue to make the green backgrounds and in a slightly different ratio to make the green-blue honeycomb top left. When I made my black color, I made it by adding black to this green.

I tend to work in a fairly limited palette for each work. I am comfortable when most of the colors in a work are in the same color family. I confess that this is because it helps me see values. If I have pale green and darker green, I have no problem telling that one is light and one is dark. But, with completely different colors — a red and a blue, for instance, — its’s harder for me to see the values. I get sucked into the quality and emotion of the hues. Keeping color unified through most of the composing helps me to see what I’m doing. Then, I can add some splashes of a completely different color in a few spots.

ENERGY AND THINGS TO LOOK I enjoyed using the silkscreened pattern of the branches as a way to create energy, and to direct one’s eye through the scene. The branches help to point to the birds. And, the birds are alive, and are themselves looking somewhere. It’s just natural that the viewer wants to look there too.

A PLACE TO REST   I almost lost this one. This small composition has a lot going on. But I think the subtle color of the green paper backgrounds, and their delicate watercolor-like appearance offer a resting place. Another way to have played with all these elements would have been to leave a much larger place as a resting spot, concentrating the livelier elements together in another section.

One last thing to remember – none of these guiding principles is absolute.  There could be a work that consists of one large, dark, static shape and no variety that is, nonetheless, emotionally powerful. Great artists break the rules all the time!

This week in the studio I am back to working on larger pieces. I hope to bring some of what I’ve practiced with the smaller paper works with me to these new projects.

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(If you would like to learn more about “Conversations for Morning”, or look at other paper collage works, please visit my website HERE)

For all the artmakers: Happy creating
For all the art lovers: Happy appreciating

Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi

bobbi@bobbibaughstudio.com

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