Creative Every Day Check In: Playful Experimentation with the Dark #CED2013

For the Creative Every Day Challenge, last week I put together

Dark Alienation: Mixed Media This week I spent a slice of time every day to create this mixed media piece called “Alienation” along the theme of “Dark” – the monthly theme for January at Creative Every Day. I didn’t have a plan when I started out, I just plopped some gesso and paint thickly on a board, cut out some fish from Escher and traced some fish to add in the same shape, but made from dictionary pages.

After I cut the dictionary page fish, I layed them over the fish which were a deep shade of orange because I didn’t feel like the color fit my intention of “Dark”. The fish made of printed pages seemed to reflect both alienation and darkness.

Dark Alienation in process: pulling the pieces together.

I loved how it looked at that point, but it didn’t feel dark enough. So I put on purple glitter wash followed by a dark gray wash to make it dirtier and darker while at the same time, more shimmery.

I was working on other vintage book page pieces which I will show later in the week. Since it took me five days to get this piece made from start to finish, I wanted to honor it here.

It might not be the greatest piece technicially, but I enjoy the vibe it gives off… of darkness and alienation.

What did you create this week?

Creative every day 2013