Citrus Colors

This is the next in the collaborative art project that I'm doing with a group based on the book True Colors. The artist who owns this particular journal chose citrus colors as her theme. The book we worked in, was like an old style cookbook which she had done a fabulous dimensional leafy cover for and we contributing artists were left to art up the cardboard dividers. See on the right there is the the little metal tab sticking out. It made a nice sturdy base to work on.

I started out by gessoing to get some texture built into the surface, painting in greens, then I started layering imagery. The peas,leaves,peppers and cucumbers are from a paper napkin which I peeled apart until I had the top layer only, this is a nice way to get some images with a lot of transparency. I had just used up yet another package of incense, this one is Japanese, and I liked the colors and Japanese printing, so this is on there, some origami paper, an artChix atc which I altered, and then a swag of furry fibers through some punched and eyeleted holes. As a final step I slathered on the gel medium and pressed into it a plastic netting (probably from fruit).

On the reverse side a similar process was used with some repeating of the elements. First gessoing, painting, then a chinese character doily, cucumbers from the napkin again, the same origami painting, as well as the same fiber and eyelets. I added a small quiltlet which I made in the citrus colors intentionally for this collage. Lastly, there is an artChix image which is a intensely tinted photograph copy on some interesting papers. One of the interesting papers behind the image is made from spritzing bleach onto a plain colored paper, makes a nice mottled texture.