Abstract Composition Backbones Mask 4 s867

I'm on a roll with collage ...

Below is a print I made awhile ago, using a scissor-customized Abstract Composition Backbones Mask 4 s867.  (My only customizing was to cut it free from its original 6" x 6" outer frame.)

In the top of this photo, I've used a background of monochromatic browns and tans.  Over that, I've printed the foreground using a sponge brayer heavily loaded with heavy body acrylic paint.

At the bottom of the above photo, I've made a second print by -- immediately after the top print -- flipping the mask over while it was still heavily loaded with paint.  I pressed the still-wet mask to the paper's surface, then lifted it.  The result is a "ghost print" that intrigued me so much, I wanted to use it in a collage.

The mixed-media collage below is the result --

 

 In the collage above, you can see that the ghost print has been torn into pieces, with the largest piece placed right behind and slightly under the focal area, in the upper left quadrant. More pieces are placed under that large piece, trailing downward all the way to the bottom.  Another piece is located at the far left top.  

The goal with these placements is to guide the viewer's eye from the upper left down to the focal area and then further downward to the bottom of the artwork.

However, to my eye, that placement wouldn't hold up on its own.  To make a composition that would please me, I needed to give that trailing angular pattern the visual strength of a column that's also angular.  

I chose dark brown papers for that main column.  After those were glued in place, I added more papers, smaller in size, still brown but medium in value -- a value that's lighter than those dark browns, but darker than the trail of ghost-printed pieces.  

My aim was to have an artwork that had a visually pleasing combination of light values, medium values and dark values.  This is the variety of values that we see in the world around us; and we look for the same variety in art, especially abstract art.

To better explain difference between values, I offer this really simplified version of a value scale: 

 

Here I've used basic black, gray and white to illustrate a gradation from very dark values all the way to very light values.  A variety of values is important in all art, but again, it's my opinion that this holds especially true when the art is non-representational.

Today's featured mask, Abstract Composition Backbones Mask 4 s867, looks like this in its original form:

It's one of a four-piece series of 6" x 6" masks designed to provide backbone compositions for quick-to-finish abstract artworks.  Everyone -- even at beginner stage -- can make abstract art, once the backbones are there!

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