Continuing the Paper Quilt Sketchbook Series

I have been engaged in a sketchbook practice making paper quilt collages that were inspired by the Gees Bend Quilters. This came about after attending a workshop through the National Gallery of Art’s Virtual Studio program. The initial post for this project can be found here. In addition to making the paper quilt collages, I decided to take the practice a bit further by drawing the collages on the blank pages adjacent to the collages (you can read about that here). Since my last post, where I talked about source materials, I made 5 more collages & drawings. I will be sharing them in this post with a bit of reflection on my process.

For these first two collages, I used images from a magazine (I recall a lot of train cars) and some product information from some paper I purchased. The collages of each of these are below.

Below I will show you each collage with it’s drawing companion. I really wanted to capture the feel of the writing from the first collage and for the second piece I was captivated by the repetitive circular shapes. The drawings are on the left, the collages are on the right. You can click on either image to enlarge them.

After completing these, I started to think that I wanted to simplify a bit more. One of the main reasons I was inspired by the Gees Bend Quilts was their simplicity of materials. Since I am becoming more and more, lately, about minimalism in my artwork, I had that idea in mind when making the next three collages. But all my papers sort of screamed color and shape! Enter the wrapping to a bar of Kirk’s Castile Soap and the AHA! moment arrived. This was followed by some additional finds of very basic papers around my studio.

And here they are below with their companion drawings. I think these were the most challenging to draw. No wild colors or concrete shapes to mimic. As above, drawings on left, collages on right and they also can be enlarged by clicking the individual image.

Thanks for taking this journey with me. I will continue with this project until my little 4″ x 6″ book is filled. But I will probably wait until I am finished and then post my favorites.