A Salute to the Art of Improvisation!

Every peice of art that we make is never a masterpiece. Sometimes as I experiment different techniques, I end up with pieces that are not worth the second look and yet definitely do not belong in the trash merely because - they are my creations!

No matter how big or small our homes are, a point comes when we got to clear the clutter and all these "not so good" pieces get the hardest kick. Recently I have been at it and found some 11 x 14 pieces of designs on yupo that had a thick layer of a blob like thing; the kind of blob that made them seem a disaster! I pleaded with my brain to come up with some way to use them and even ardently prayed to dear god; finally what seemed like a eureka moment - I was prompted to use the "Art of Improvisation".

Improvisation was a final attempt to revive their usability. I looked around me and saw some leftover water in a bottle that I had attempted to finish minutes ago. I divided the water into three separate bowls (small) and added couple drops of three different inks in each. It was now a diluted medium of yellow, brown and orange. Then I took some of each in my palm, poured it on the designs, let it flow and take its place on the cards. Since it was really wet and very late, I had to let it dry through the night.

The morning came sooner than I expected and the cards beat the morning tea to grab my attention. Its best to use a flat and straight surface when drying a wet card was my morning lesson. They had now graduated to an uneven beauty - wonderful super thin transparent glassy effect on one side of the card and absolutely nothing on other and the blob still dominantly spreading itself in the center but now making little more sense and blending with atleast one part of the composition. Anyways after a cuppa of my best microwaved tea, I first cut the cards into two inches wide strips and then converted them into bookmarks after additional trimming. The pieces with little or no color were now ready to be re-created and "improvised again" and the others had evolved into a bookmark with a layered effect (tiny part of the blob as top layer and the thin glassy effect as the bottom layer).  

The one with layered effect is pasted to my right here and the one without layered, is the picture to my left.

By now, excited with an elevated mind (without caffeine), I decided to do more and drew random outlines for some of the self formed shapes in the bottom layer. A personalized message on the back of the bookmark and the overall outcome made my day!

I salute the Art of Improvisation, for now I had some simple gifts for some of my dear friends and ofcourse fun along the way.