In the process of creating my new series, I had quite a few boo-boos, ehs, and oh-that-didn't-work moments. The thing about marbling is that once your image is transferred from the tank to your paper, that's it. It's permanently affixed. There's no going back to the original piece for touch ups, tweaks, or adjustments. You just have to start over. And start over. And start over. So while I have eight just-what-I-wanted pieces for the series (ones that I consider frameable and worthy of an exhibition appearance), I have about three dozen pieces that didn't make the cut. But I also recognize that, with a little work, these pieces could be an extension of the series ~ offshoots as it were ~ three of which you saw in yesterday's post. And of course, to get to those three, I went through another round of boo-boos, ehs, and oh-that-didn't-work moments. And that's what I'm sharing with you today. I found that with the right cropping and a few additional overmarbles, these too could look fantastic.
For example, the image below started out as the original cluster of circles surrounded by white space but when I laid the paper down, I must have trapped an air bubble and one of the circles ended up a bit ugly-funky. By itself, surrounded by all that white space, that air bubble stuck out like a sore thumb. But, with a Stone overmarble using the same colors as in the circles, I had something I liked.
You can hardly notice the ugly-funky air bubble in the middle circle on the bottom row!
The next piece below started out as the circle clusters surrounded by a Stone pattern. I did not like the way the circle clusters turned out ~ not enough color rings to them ~ so I decided to overmarble with a more intricate traditional pattern (a Non-Pareil) in hopes that it would pop right out of those circles. Well, it didn't pop at all. It just looked, eh. So once again I employed the overmarble ~ larger stones ~ as well as a light Moire and I got something I was much happier with:
And finally, like the piece above, the piece below started out as circle clusters surrounded by stones but I did not like the lack of color in the circles. So I overmarbled a Gel-Git (in white space) over the circles. But that still looked empty to me so I once again overmarbled a Gel-Git but this time over the entire piece. This, as it turns out, is my favorite original "boo-boo."
So this new series has taken quite a few twists and turns but everything originates from the same vision and idea ~ the 70s images and colors with a contemporary spin. Once all these pieces are put next to each other, not only will the entire picture be complete, there will be a complexity to it that brings depth to the overall series ~ and that has totally taken me pleasantly by surprise.