Cheerful and Colorful Paintings

Cheerful and Colorful Paintings in Oil, Acrylic, Mixed Media and Collage
nancystandlee@sbcglobal.net

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Gerald Brommer Workshop ~ Week Two ~ Collage

11" x 11" watercolor collage on 300 lb. paper.
I enjoyed working on this piece and started out just getting paper down and that included some old postage stamps I'd torn from envelopes. I cut them in two and if you click on the image you might see Cary Grant in the middle left area of the dark black section under the gold (candy wrapper I think). Some of the pieces were from the inside of privacy envelopes. It was fun to experiment. I washed over some gold paint (Liquitex's acrylic Basics value series gold). It works great for some light washes mixed with water or a little medium. At the bottom of the painting I added some "Brommer Sanskrit writing" for interest. Most of the painting was made from watercolor painted pieces of oriental papers and then torn into the desired shapes.

Nancy and Jerry

My copy of one of his favorite books has arrived and I'm in the process of reading it now. You may be lucky and find a copy in a used book store. Many are very expensive online as they are out of print. The book is Emotional Content: How to Create Paintings That Communicate, @ 2003, publisher International Artist. Gerald focuses on identifying, developing and conveying your own message and personal response to a scene or image. It helps the artist make the leap from mastering technique to mastering the message.

P.S.
Friends are saying I couldn't find Cary Grant so I've cropped the high resolution image and here he is. Turn your head sideways and he's between the gold and the purple in the center section. Reminds me of playing "Where's Waldo". "Can you see me now" says Archibald Alec Leach.

5 comments:

HeartFire said...

That's a beautiful collage, love your colors! What fun!

Joan Sandford-Cook said...

Really enjoying these collage works - the current one such sumptuous colours and yes I spotted Cary Grant. Thanks for the detail of how it was achieved. I must keep stamps and sweety papers in my box in future.

Margie Whittington said...

Thanks once again for sharing the workshop with us. Your blog is so full of good info.
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Michelle Himes said...

I found this while searching for future Jerry Brommer workshops and had to comment. I took this workshop two years ago, and I loved it. I enjoyed reading and looking at your recap. Love your final landscape - it came out much better than mine. :-)

I also took his "Emotional Content" workshop - that's not what he calls it, but that's what it contained. If you get a chance to take that one, go for it.

I've written about both of the workshops on my own blog, although you would have to scroll down quite a bit to find them.

Nancy Standlee said...

Michelle, thank you so much for the feedback and I would love to take another Brommer workshop. These two workshop weeks were such a joy taking with an exceptional man and teacher. He said he thought his book on emotional content was the best out of his books and I found it used online. In fact I've found and ordered a number of his books used but haven't had the time to read them yet. I'm still in awe of the amount of books he's written. One of the more endearing qualities is to hear him working on a piece while we're working and saying.. Oh, wow.. look at this.. being so surprised and happy at his results.