IsabeauxStudio

The final piece in the colored pencil collage series evolved from a need for a piece of art over our fireplace.  We live in a loft with lots of tall white walls and a lot of glass.  Our fireplace is a free standing column, that goes from floor to ceiling.  Above the actual fireplace is a very tall very empty expanse of white.  It was making me crazy, that big space needed something to break it up.  I specifically wanted to create a piece that was long and and not too tall.  I think the final dimensions were 30" x 12".

 I wanted the colors of this piece to be in shades of gray so it would coordinate with the color of the metal frames around our windows and also match the slate gray color from the tiles around the fireplace.  Here are the images that started the collage.

I love the worn look of these shingles.  This picture was taken in Maine, and is the side of the Rockland Breakwater Lighthouse.  Yes, I was the freak tourist taking a picture of a wall.  The picture below (taken by Jeremy D'Entremont), shows how you can walk all the way out to the lighthouse on the breakwater wall.  It was a pretty cool thing to do and was farther than it looks.  As much as I love living in California, I really miss Maine and miss the charm of New England.

Again, you can see how  I mix snippets of my life and travels into these collages.  The next two photos that make up the collage for Wallflower come from our trip to Hawaii.  I love the rainbow eucalyptus tree trunks in the picture at right.  The color in the bark is really beautiful.

Here is the final collage.  Again it is pretty complicated with all the layers.  The base of the collage was the photo of the wall, over top of that was the tree trunks, and on top of that was the flowers.  I was really conscious of having horizontal, vertical, and "organic" elements in this piece to help make it interesting.

Here is the first addition of color, dated 7/5/2006.  I have just barely started.  I am trying to use "cool" gray shades to counteract the yellowish cast of the gray "underpainting."

Here is the final image.  I really love this piece, and it looks really nice framed up and  hanging over our fireplace.  The good news is that this piece got to "travel"-  but more about that later.