Winter Bouquet

My AB group meets monthly to swap books and do a small workshop or project. For this month i chose as inspiration the artwork by Jo Schukar in this month's "With One Pallette" feature in Somerset Studios magazine. The pallette she chose was Black, White and Green. The overriding theme in the January issue was black and white - so it was nice to see how a splash of green gave life to these collage pieces.To get started i needed a base. I decided to use some heavy weight black cardstock i recently purchased at a art supply warehouse sale. The paper was huge - 20" by 14". Kind of an awkward size, so i cut it in half to give me a 10 by 14 strip - which would be suitable for a "portrait" orientation.The background in the magazine artwork was various black and white papers, but i recently acquired a huge quantity of scrapbook paper with a lot of grey tones. So i went with that. I cut several coordinating prints in geometric shapes. If it helps, think of them as the table, the floor, the wallpaper and the drapes.
Next i needed a vase. I had a an assortment of textured papers that would make nice contemporary vases. I chose a heavy texture and left it quite cylindrical.For the flowers i used roughly torn circles from old sheet music. The leaves and stems are green mulberry paper.

Once all the background shapes were glued to the black paper, i softened the patterns with some gesso. Applied lightly so not to completely cover the paper. I also applied a bit of gesso to the sheet music flowers. Once everything is gesso'd and glued down it is time to add some drama with Portfolio Oil pastels. I just LOVE these things. You just outline your paper cutouts then smooth and blend with your fingers. it gives a painterly effect to a collage that it otherwise somewhat childlike. Although - that can be cool too!

I used light and dark green to accentuate the leaves and stems. Black for the petals and stamens and to add shadows. Then i as inspired by Jo's artwork, i added a mid century modern squiggle along the top left and bottom right edges. A smidge of yellow bightened the whole thing up.
Once done i found that the whole thing was too high on the page. The flowers were kind of bunched up at the top and there was a big space at the bottom. So again to emulate Jo, i added a couple of pears, cut out of mulberry paper and outlined with oil pastels.
Well, I don't love it - i think my flowers are too much in rows or something. But for my first attempt, not bad. I'll be back to share my second attempt and the art created by my artistic friends. I hope they enjoy this as much as i did!