Something New for the New Year

“Rest not! Life is sweeping by; go dare before you die.
Something mighty and sublime, leave behind to conquer time.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Happy New Year all.  I’ve been trying to write this post for 2 days, but life has been sweeping by. Sadly, I’ve not accomplished anything mighty or sublime, but I was able to rescue a failed watercolor study. This is the ‘before’ picture:

(When your own mother tells you that you should start over, you know it is time to give up on a piece.)

Instead, I thought that it might be fun to turn it into some Artist Trading Cards (ATCs). So, I cut it into a 16 rectangles and set to work on tangling each one separately. I know people who just tangle right over a watercolor wash as if it wasn’t there, but I prefer to let the colors and texture of the paint act as a string.

The result, well, they weren’t much better than the original.

ATCs made from cut up watercolor landscape

So then I wondered, what would it look like if I put them all back together? It was a good idea.  It would have been a better idea if I had numbered the back of the cards before I shuffled them. It took almost half an hour to piece together this puzzle.  And made a note about which way should be up. But I like the result.  Hope you do, too.

All put back together after tangling

In any case, it was a fun exercise and something I will definitely consider next time I have a painting that doesn’t excite me.

Wishing you lots of creative experiments this year.