Friday, August 20, 2010

Italian Composition with Chris Cozen


Several weeks ago I was lucky enough to get into one of Chris Cozen's classes at Stamping Details. Chris is a world renowned artist and has a gift for color. Please check out her website and online classes. The class was called Italian Composition. Chris had just returned from France and Italy armed with wonderful background ideas. My class was the last of five classes in one weekend so I actually was a bit behind everyone. Most of the students had signed up for all five classes and had already made many backgrounds that were extraordinary.

I made two panels and don't ask me how I ended up with these colors. Orange is my least favorite color and my second least favorite is yellow. Talk about stepping out of your box! I managed to get the paint on, but I really didn't have time to build it up because it wouldn't have dried in time to do the decoupage portion of the class. I find it odd, but the more I looked at it, the more I began to like it.

Chris had taken tons of pictures of architecture while in Europe. Plus, she had picked up some old journals and different bits of ephemera, which she shared with the class. The written collage element on my panel was taken from a journal that was hand written in the 1800's.

At this point, I have the collage portion on and then I courageously added a little swipe of blue paint and called it done. As I looked at it, it seemed a little flat to me. Well, of course, there was no build up. At the advise of my friend Suzi Blu, who is also an artist and an online teacher, I added some Golden Bead Gel and Molding Medium and let it dry. I loved that, but it still wasn't quite right. At the advice of another artist friend, Nina, I added the brown paint to one of the panels and a very dark purple paint to the other.

After working on these panels and playing with them and showing them to my friends, I think they're finally fun. I think I'm finished. I wish you could see the depth that they finally have. I took the pictures on an angle so maybe you could see. It's funny how sometimes art can take you a couple of hours and you're done. Other times, it takes however long it takes to get to that place, wherever that may be in your own head, when you finally say, ok, I think it's done...mmm, but maybe not. Ha Ha

I hope Chris would be happy with my novice work.

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