Monday, July 28, 2014

One for the bees ...

Just a brief little postette ... a bit of art I created over the weekend prompted by a challenge created by Effy Wild for her ning group. Say what you will, but sometimes having a jumping off point can be really satisfying when you're feeling creative but don't really have anything specific in mind.

I thought about "finding" a good bee quote to use as inspiration, but (as usual) the act of reading a bunch of bee quotes and not seeing one that grabbed me generated some writing of my own. When in doubt, use your own stuff, I always say.

The background is blueprint paper that's been gelli printed using my 6x6" gelli plate on Impression Obsession's plexiglass Mega Mount designed for their 6x6 Cover-a-Card rubber stamps. It's a cool quick way to get multiple layers of paint and texture on a big sheet of paper, and I just keep stamping and stamping till I figure that paper's had enough.

The bees are acetone image transfers. They come from Clipart, Etc, my favourite online resource for black and white images (historical, biological, etc etc). The flowers are from Stampin Up. There are a few random bits of collage and washi tape here and there.

The poem was created ransom-note style on scraps of paper using miscellaneous rubber stamp letters, rub-on letters and the ever-so-handy (but impossible to find at the moment?) Tim Holtz Label Letters. If I don't find more of these soon, I may need to make my own, which is a shame since I love the font (Dymo labeler!) and how each letter is already pre-cut. I created each word separately and then figured out the word spacing on the finished piece afterward.

Nothing too grand, but for some reason I really like it. It's funny (at least to me) that I'm always trying for "casual primitive" and wind up with "neatly organized". Think I'll just blame it on my Virgoness and learn to live with it.


2 comments:

George Wright said...

The large size scan is OUTSTANDING - it really looks great. Nice work, nice scan. Thanks for thinking to post it in a big enough size to enjoy the detail of your work.

Rose

Aaron Zacharias said...

I love the One For The Bees, both very cerebral and very sensitive and feeling. I am reminded of when I was in Puebla, a city near Mexico City last March having breakfast on a patio off the zocalo (main square) when a large honey bee visited me. Because of her size and her unusual behaviour (she was perching on the brim of my cup to drink some of my hot chocolate) I surmised that she must be a queen in search of a place to start a new colony. Given all the honey I have had in my life it seemed only fair to share my cocoa with her. I felt honoured!