Hi, I've been getting a lot of new subscribers to the blog, for which I am very thankful, but I realized that many of you do not know much about me. In addition to being a certified "Pug Slut" -- it seems it's agreed upon now -- I am also a writer/teacher and a photographer/artist. I've been having a lot of success lately in showing and selling my collages, which along with my photographs I post here from time to time. Don't worry, pug lovers among you, just as they do in my life, pugs have a way of showing up in my work as well (as you can see in this picture here).
I thought I might share with you all a little bit about my process. This is an unfinished draft of a collage I have been working on for some time. It is a difficult piece because in order to capture the ethereal nature of the water and the mermaid the figures need to be intentionally blurry, but I still want something for viewers eyes to grab on to. I work from "recycled photos" -- digital images that may not quite work as stand-alone images, but when manipulated in Photoshop can really tell a story. I then print out these images and draw, embroider and whatever else I think will provide a more three-dimensional aspect to the piece, before scanning them back into Photoshop and manipulating some more. This is my sixth version of this collage and I have yet to print it out to work on it. The first version featured the girl alone. I wanted to add a companion and put in the pug on the righthand size of the image, but where I originally placed it, it looked as though he and the girl were engaged in some unsavory business (I'm not that much of a "slut") so I moved him around and added another and have been playing with the piece ever since. There still needs to be something going on in the left hand side and I have some ideas, but I thought I'd share it with you now as a work-in-progress. And, don't worry, there's still another pug post to follow later today!