Too Matchy-Matchy?

Hi all, this is my posting today over on The Sketchbook Challenge blog.

I love to bring opposites into play in my work when things get a little too copacetic. I'm always drawn to analogous color schemes, but by the time I get everything looking all happy and cooperative, I'm bored stiff with the composition. That's when it's time to liven things up by going off the rails and adding something totally unexpected.

A good example is the two-page spread above. Everything was getting along too well, not to mention that I really disliked the page on the left.

After puttering around with some tissue and paints, I created a highly contrasting sheet of paper, which I then adhered onto the offending page with rubber cement.

Now the spread has more character.

I extended my collaged sheet over onto the right-hand page a tad, just to marry them a little more. They are certainly opposites- a cool blue/green and a warm russet/orange- but they also relate somewhat in that they were both heavily layered with the same paint colors and using the same stamping tool. I have no doubt that later they will call for something more dramatic to bind them together, but for today, this spread is incomplete and will make a wonderful background for future imagery.

More "opposites" work in my sketchbook included both opposites in composition and in color.

Here, a heavily painted collage sheet (left) is paired with a paper towel remnant (right) that had been used to mop up green/blue paint. The piece on the left is created with unnatural colors in garish combinations (my favorite kind of mixed-media art to create, quite frankly!) while the piece on the right is almost pastoral and looks as if it could have been monoprinted directly from leaves taken from my backyard. Like the one above it, this spread is incomplete.

Color opposites find harmony in my sketchbooks... here, painted paper and hand-dyed fabrics that have been doodled on with Pentel Gel Fabric Pens.

Scraps of fabric previously used for experimentation are always welcome in my sketchbooks, too. Here, purple and yellow- opposites who famously don't usually work and play well together- share space without dominating one another.

More temperature opposites, turquoise and yellow, mirror each other from one side of the sketchbook to the other, the left one done with layers of paint while the right comprises layers of stacked journaling in yellow and turquoise india ink.