angie brown :: artist | illustrator | designer
In my ongoing fascination with animals doing people things, I give you Boys Who Brunch, a cut paper collage featuring all recycled materials: paint chips, security envelope, greeting card envelope, hang tag from a screwdriver set, and a magazine page.
I really should do more like this.
It’s been a big week in AngieLand. The long-awaited compilation book by Dawn DeVries Sokol entitled A World of Artist Journal Pages, finally hit the shelves. My copy arrived Friday, and I’ll be spending some quality time with it ASAP. I’m super-stoked to see my work in such great company.
Also this week, the lovely folks at They Draw & Cook featured my Garlic~Rosemary~Parmesan Bread recipe in the jumbotron collection on the home page. I’ve got about 2.5 illustrated recipes in various stages of completion that I really need to get finished and submitted. That’s one of my goals this year—more illustrated recipes and maps for Salli and Nate.
And rounding out my exciting week, this morning I popped in to the Blessing of the Fleet festival to judge the Mt. Pleasant Artist Guild’s show. I chose 8 winners from among 120 pieces, and it was just as difficult/fun as I thought it would be. I think I did well though, and selected a broad range of work.
Pictured: fabric, paper, paint, ink and hand-embroidered thread. I’d like to get back to sewing and do more work like this piece, created more than a year ago. Mostly though I’ve been playing with paper mache, drawing silly pictures of my friends, and wishing I had a kiln.
I went to St. Louis last weekend on a lark. We spent much of the first day at the Art Museum, gawking at Nick Cave’s Soundsuits (see weird humanoid shapes above, far left.) On the second day, we found the mile-long graffiti wall on the riverbank and took a gazillion photos– I’ve incorporated a few details from those photos in my collage. Theride up to the top of the Arch was rather anticlimatic (it was too foggy to enjoy the view), but then we took a 10-minute ride on a motion simulator at the Planetarium. And *that* my friends, was the high point of the trip– a freakin’ rollercoaster through space is just as awesome as it sounds.
St. Louis is pretty cool and has a lot of fun stuff to do. I’ll definitely stop there again to see more of it next time I’m on my way to somewhere else.
Posted on They Draw and Travel.
Taking a break from drawing cats this week– here are a few pages from my art journal. I’ve been working in this book for a few years now– in its former life it was a paperback volume of love poems in Italian. But now it’s like an archaeological puzzle documenting my body of work– the outtakes, footnotes, and “making of” stories behind my “proper” works.
Whilst making collages the way I do, one creates a large amount of discarded bits, the negative areas cut or torn away and not used. Those pieces are not thrown away– they are carefully horded in stacks and piles on my work table, in case I need them. When the layer of creative flotsam builds up too thick, I get out the art journal book and glue some bits in here and there until my work surface is visible again. Occasionally I’ll splash in leftover paint and experiment with marks and materials on random pages. It’s like playtime for my soul.
The chronology is a bit wibbly-wobbly though, because I’m just as likely to add to older pages as I am to start something new. Sometimes I can get a rough idea of the time period, because I recognize the bits that came from other, larger works. The pages above were made from leftovers from the NYC Triptych, but the paint went down much earlier.
Other pages incorporate freshly harvested papers, blocks of color torn from magazines, junk mail, etc. I rather enjoy my little art journal. It’s a great place to warm up the creative muscles, experiment with marks and color, and just let loose and play.
This week’s project is a fun little illustration for a chili cook-off fundraiser benefiting local pet rescue groups and shelters. My friends in the feline rescue are teaming up with a newly formed canine rescue group that concentrates its efforts on the “bully” breeds. The concept they gave me was “bully dog vs. refined feline,” and the dog group happens to be led by a local chef.
I felt compelled to play with le fabric scraps on this project, and go all experimental with bleach and burlap and paint and stuff. Later on, I’ll be incorporating the illustration into a poster along with some hand-drawn lettering, and probably a few chili pepper doodles sprinkled hither and thither to nail the concept down visually.
I’m rather pleased with the overall look so far… My favorite parts, of course, are the dog’s “tattoos”.
What’s more fun than dining with friends? Feasting with Furiends! Today I made a cut paper collage for the good people at the Feline Freedom Coalition, a feral rescue group that does really great work saving kitty lives in the Charleston area. They’ve got a busy fundraiser season ahead and will be requiring lots of whimsical drawings for their posters and banners and bits. The ol’ blog here may get cat-saturated in the next few months, but I’m okay with it. What else is the internets for, if not for cats?
Sadly, I’m not going to Europe any time soon. A friend of mine just returned from a few weeks in Germany and surrounding countries, and I enjoyed her photos so much I made this little map for her, including the canals of Amsterdam and Metz, France, and the castles of Bavaria.
I’ve been playing with layering cut paper, and there’s also ink, graphite, color pencil, gouache and watercolor.
I created this aptly titled Triptych (pun intended) using bits of ephemera and memorabilia collected during my trip to New York in April. As seen on They Draw and Travel.
*The Beastie Boys’ No Sleep Til Brooklyn was our theme song for this trip, as we drove all night—12 hours— to NYC from Charleston, SC, made a stop in Midtown before we checked in at our rental in Brooklyn, where we promptly napped. So, like, it kind of literally HAD TO BE our song, right?!
Other materials used include photocopies of antique city maps, oil paint, ink, vellum, and various papers. And now I have to figure out where to hang it…
Have I ever mentioned my day job? I ‘m a graphic designer in the marketing and communications department of a large law firm. I’m bringing this up now because one of the attorneys I work with recently commissioned three paintings for the office in Manhattan. This one, bearing the working title Le Big One–NYC, measures 42″ x 42″. It’ll be the focal point opposite the reception desk in the lobby. I took progress shots along the way, because, hey– that’s fun, right? I like to look back at earlier stages and layers to see how it developed and evolved– it’s a bit like archaeology, in a way…
So as you can see, I started out layering in various papers–including maps–and blocked off areas with a little oil paint. I then worked in a few gel transfers and more paint (rinse & repeat) until I was satisfied with the result.
But the real take away here is that I’m going to have paintings on display in New York City. (pause to let that sink in.) Also, the beloved attorney that commissioned the works sent this to me via email: “To have personal, original, meaningful work from within the family in our space is priceless.” That brings a l’il tear to my eye, it does.
The Even Better News is that my BFF coincidentally just moved to the Lower East Side, and I’m going up to visit her this spring. We’ll take a jaunty little hike up to Midtown East and pop in to see my work in its shiny new home.
Cheers to that!
And hey, –thanks for stopping by. Got any questions about my methods and techniques? Ask away!
Want to see more of my mixed media gel transfer art-making shenanigans? Yeah, ya do– click it.
My dad was a landscape artist. He created a lovely natural oasis in the backyard complete with fish ponds, waterfalls, and brick-lined paths. There was a covered swing, and birdfeeders, and lots and lots of daylillies. I draw bears whenever I miss him, because he was very much like a bear. He was shaped like one, and he could be gruff when hungry or irritated, and downright fierce if his family was threatened. He also had a soft side–a warm and tender and cuddly, huggy side, and a very big heart.
This is my final project for Eccentric Illustration; the theme was “Evoking Emotion.” The timing was uncanny, falling around the first anniversary of losing my dad.
11.26.54 — 12.13.12
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