New

This image began as an idea of looking up towards the sky, towards the light of heaven where hope exists. In my exhausting search to find employment I sometimes have moments of hopelessness and I  look skyward wondering when my luck will change. When will the day come when I have income coming in to cover all of my basic necessities? On the positive side, at least I have plenty of time to focus on my art work and channel some of this energy into it.

My Process:
The above piece is just the preliminary stage of what is to come. I have an idea about the direction that I want to take it.. I had craft glue from a previous project and used it to adhere the drawn image on to the canvas. Some of the shadows are entirely unintentional and are a result of the glue soaking through the paper.
I am am going to incorporate text that will be eventually hidden by drips of oil paint starting at the top of the canvas and cascade down over the image. The drips will be thinned out with turpentine which will allow me to do multiple layers. Then I will go back into the negative space (the orange) and apply different colors to create the illusion of depth and space. The final layer will be my salt solution that i have used in previous work.
I think I have to go back to the drawing board and re work the image so it appears that she is in fact looking up towards the sky. More to come!

A peak into my process

With this weeks post, I wanted to give you a peak into my process in creating my rust pieces. I start out with a blank metal piece and apply paint to the surface. I then apply the salt solution on top of this. As seen in the first picture the metal plate is wet and the salt solution bubbles. For optimal results I prefer to let the plate dry in the sun, as this allows the salt to form a crystalized layer. After the second phase as seen above, the solution dries to a flaky texture and lifts from the surface. This is an exciting moment for me and I am tempted to pick at it...but I don't.

This current salt solution just sits on top which allows me a little more control but I am getting bored. There needs to be more risk involved. I'm looking into different metals that I can combine together to eat away the surface of the metal plate. The questions that I am asking myself are; If I continue to work in the salt solution, what can I do to seal it and will the sealant continue to produce the results that I want? (in the last post I sealed the solution with Epoxi Resin, and I didn't care for the results), will it matter if the sealant was matte and not gloss? Do I even want to move forward with any kind of sealant, period? What will happen with the new metals? How will this change the plate's appearance? Will it be different from the salt solution appearance? How many applications will I need to do?

I have a few more ideas of the direction that I want to take my work including using new metals. But for now I will leave you with a quote from Francis Ford Coppola, "If you don't take a risk then how are you going to make something really beautiful, that hasn't been seen before."