Monday, December 5, 2011

"Broken Fragments" (sold)




















(sold)

"Place all your broken fragments into the golden bowl of prayer to be made whole." This is a quote inspired by the writings of George MacDonald. The faint imagery in the background is from a piece that I did several years ago which includes his entire piece of prose. Two of the lines from his quote were combined as the lettering coming out of the bowl. That line is..."Gather my broken fragments to a whole. Into my basket, for my golden bowl." Another interesting bit is that George MacDonald was a contemporary of C.S. Lewis and very instrumental in his conversion to Christianity.


The background for this piece came from a photo of a much larger piece. The lettering is very faint and impossible to read, but it makes for interesting texture. Even if the piece had been smaller, the lettering would not have turned out well through the camera lens. One very important thing to note when uploading images on the computer is that a scanned image is much better than a photo...especially where lettering is involved. If you have a piece that is much larger than your scanner at home, it would be wise to take it to an in house photo lab that has the equipment to scan large works. They can place your image on a disk and then you can make it whatever size you want from your computer. (If you live in Austin, Holland's Photo Lab is a good place to go.)

There is no Pouring Medium or anything else altering the imagery in this piece, but it was prepared for lettering by spraying the surface 3x with Spray Acrylic Coating and then brushing on a mixture of Gel Matte Medium (2 parts water to 1 part medium) It was an extremely difficult surface to write on because the pouring medium or even acrylic paint makes for a smoother surface.

Thanks to all of you who attended the Open Studio Event yesterday. It was great fun and now you know where I do these pieces everyday. You will need to come again when we're actually creating artwork!

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