New Watercolor Collages

Jailbird

Copyright Kay Smith 2009

Cat Tales and Fish Stories

Yesterday and today was fun day in the studio for me to relax after the holiday hubbub and hoopla. I'd already prepared two 11x14 approx sizes of matboard, one had been brushed with black gesso (cat above) and the other white gesso along with torn tissue toilet paper covers. This cat here I placed cut out plastic shapes into another coat of white gesso over the black gesso, let dry, then applied paint where I saw shapes. Christmas miracle! There appeared a cat and fish!

With Jailbird, I collaged a man's eyes photo detail I'd torn out of a newspaper, then the bottom half of his face appears on the left side. Portions of an article about a suave and shrewd swindler are scattered about including info about the police. Just last week had been reading about Mr. Madoff and how he got caught in his Ponzi scheme. With multicolored pencils I wrote words across such as ruthless, mean, schemer, etc. Also I stamped words and postmarks with black gesso. Using colored pencils, watercolor, Caran D'Ache crayons, I put colors down then removed until a design emerged of birds, then jail bars, almost by magic. Green areas were added to symbolize green grass Mr. Madoff won't be seeing as well as hear birds singing.