This past week I continued experimenting with the circles that I punched from “failed” gel prints. Perfect punched circles against the gel print color blocks were fun but felt a little soulless. I much prefer leaning into the imperfection of an actual gel printed circle. I used the punched circles and the paper they were cut from as masks for new prints, and I do really like them.
I tried making a collage with some of the punched circles and their papers. This took me a long time to get to a composition I liked.
I find all the different brights a bit chaotic, but there are actually more desaturated sections in this composition than there are bright colors, and that really helps ground the chaos for me. I don’t always think in terms of saturated/desaturated when I am painting.
When I felt this collage was done, it took me a long time to figure out why I liked it: as I said, this is a lot more chaotic chroma than I usually allow. Realizing how the large desaturated areas made the brights more palatable for me was a breakthrough. This is something I will consider more deliberately in future compositions.
Prompts for the Week:
How do you like to desaturate your favorite hues? White? Black? A complement? Have you ever tried desaturating with earth tones? Experiment with desaturation.
How are you feeling about painting these days? Check in with yourself. What is working? What is not? Does anything need to change?
What is your favorite way to start when you first step into your studio? Share it in the comments below!
There is absolutely no failure! That was lazy writing on my part. I am describing prints that do not have an interesting composition but DO have beautiful visual texture. Not failures at all.
there is no "failure", is there?