I am still working on the large piece I blogged about last week which explores the emotional life of two little girls.

This week, I’m concentrating on leaves.

On a large work like this one, I need to go back and forth between the big picture (what it’s about) and the details that will develop that story. The girls are in an environment that places real, observable objects in unusual juxtapositions. It’s a little bit like falling down the rabbit hole or being lost in the fairy tale forest. Just as the little girls are figuring out their place in the world, the viewer will explore the environment and figure out its images.

The leaves are a design element that will help me to tie together the parts.

First, earlier this week I did some printing. These leaves were hand-printed with a few hand-cut stencils, using acrylic paint on sheer polyester fabric.

After I printed, I manually cut them out.

Now, I am working from one panel to the next to place the leaves.

TO BLEND SOME HARD EDGES

This section shows an intersection between the corner of a photo-transfer window, a panel of painted muslin and a section of text on muslin. The organic, curving shapes of the leaves soften these transitions and make the pieces relate to one another. (Note: so far, I’m just getting all the leaves in place. A little more acrylic wash on and around the leaves will probably happen.)

TO CREATE LAYERS

In my storytelling works, I like the sense of looking through one layer of reality to the next. It creates a dream-like quality. This whole group of leaves is a foreground against the images of the main background environment. But, even here I want some more depth. The deepest tone purple leaves are behind the green sheer fabric leaves which are behind a lighter acrylic layer of purple. This is a very simplified depiction of what it feels like to look through real leaves: layers on layers, light and dark and splashes of color.

TO EXTEND THE PHOTOS

Most of this is a photo (transferred to muslin) of an actual window with overgrown leaves. I’ve added more bright green collaged leaves – the ones printed on sheer fabric, to blend into the photo and provide another way for the photo to relate to the rest of the work.

If you are interested in some artwork browsing, I invite you to look at the gallery of “Home is What You Remember” on my website. You’ll find other variations of girls’ journeys and dream-like environments formed by trees and leaves. HERE

Finally:… a studio tip. My studio is the size of a single-car carport, so I need to move things around when I have several large projects at once. Plain sheets of thin plywood make wonderful movable easels.

I can lift the whole board up onto my worktable (or my regular easel) for some painting or collaging, and then set it aside. These are one quarter inch birch plywood. When not in use, they stack against a wall and take up almost no space

Thank you for reading.

I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi
bobbi@bobbibaughstudio.com

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