Usually when I write on this blog about my experiences with my artwork I try to condense it all into one blog post, but with Recycled Bottle Caps Collage Part 1 I decided it needs to be into several blog segments.  The reason for this is that I think it helps me document my thoughts and experiments on this project and so you as my reader can read about it spontaneously as I experience it.  I had noticed with this piece of artwork that many times I was not anxious to work on it.  I thought I should figure out why.  I realized that it is more like putting a puzzle together than creating a painting.  I had the idea of creating a collage with bottle caps after I was reading an article on recycling that stated that bottle caps are one of the least favorable forms of plastic for recycling. This prompted my interest in making a collage with them.  I started saving them and saved them for about a year.When I started the project I realized several things. There was a lot of round shapes of different colors and several sizes but many more of the same size.  When I work on my other collages the materials are usually fairly easy to manipulate into creative ideas.  I can cut them into shapes or tear them, paint them etc and they are flat.  The bottle caps are dimensional, hard to paint and very difficult to cut or form into another shape.  I was more perplexed than actually enjoying the creation process.

I tried manipulating them by moving them around on the surface.  This helped but it still looked like a bunch of plastic circles just sitting there.  I did know that I did not want to try to paint each bottle cap.  It would take too much time since the plastic does not accept paint very easily even with the addition of gesso.  The questioning thoughts in my mind kept persisting even though I was not physically working on the collage much. Then I had an idea.  Why not add other materials that would give some movement to the piece.  Add something I could manipulate.  I found an old  brown paper bag with green logo printed on it.  I cut it up planning the pieces to group them with the lines and color contrast of the green and the tan-colored bag in mind.  I was thrilled that addition had finally given it some direction and me some hope on this project. With this breakthrough in my thought process I also realized though that there was another way I could show direction and movement on the bottle caps. Using the same color of paint, I decided to extend the direction of paint over several of the bottle caps so the it will continue the flow of the movement to other parts of the collage.  This will cause a distraction of the eye to not focus just on each individual color of the bottle cap.

 

My excitement over this discovery made me happy.  I had finally figured out a way to not only solve some of the problems of the design with this piece but also to pave the way to finishing the piece.  It is not finished yet and there is going to take some time yet to finish it because even with the gesso it takes several layers of paint to  make it show up the way I want it to. The adventure continues with the Recycled Bottle Caps Collage Part 1 into Part 2