Practice for mixed media

too dark too fast

This was one of my first experiences with mixed media art. Before this I had only cutout letters from magazines and glued them onto paper to spell out someone's name. However, I've now learned that layering is crucial in this form of art. It gives your artwork substance and a more developed look. I enjoyed layering different materials (ribbon, crape paper, origami)  because it gave my artwork a 3-D aspect. Through some trial and error I also learned that when layering, its better to layer dark and then work your way up with lighter colors. On my first try, I started layering with white and red, and then tried to put a layer of dark blue on top. The effect of the blue crape paper layer was only noticeable.

When I started the practice, I was flipping through magazine, looking for something pretty or interesting to paste. I had no theme or story that I intended to tell through my work. Since, I was looking at magazines like People and Teen Vogue, I realized how much these magazines focus on beauty. I wanted to take a slightly critical view of that in my practice. So i cut out pictures of pretty women, shoes, and other stuff we tend to regard as beautiful. My favorite picture is of this girl sipping a drink, and layered beneath that is a green eye. I tried to make it seem like its a complete picture and as if they both are meant to go together. when the viewer looks at it, I want him to realize that  when we look at a person we tend to look at the outer beauty only (thus the eye weird but pretty in its own way).

In the third practice I tried to see if could make a picture on the first layer and then layer with black on top of it.It was similar to a pciture of text Id seen that had used to a similar effect to make text stand out. Personally, it was kinda hard to layer black paper so carefully and precisely. I also should have used colors that were more contrasting, it would have made my picture more appreciable to the eye