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hypocycloid

i was recently commissioned to make a collage for a Christmas gift.  the person who commissioned me wanted to give the collage as a friend.  the catch was that the friend is a steelers fan.  so it needed to be a steelers collage.  well, i was excited about this, but i was also a bit perplexed about how to mix my particular style of collage with a collage with such a predetermined subject and palette.  so i got some materials and got started. 



just some art paper, some mod  podge and other basic tools.  then i gethered together a bunch of steelers papers that i have. 




next i made a large collage out of these papers by cutting and gluing and just putting things wherever i liked.  then i painted over this collage with a layer of gesso, which is a kind of white paint.  before the paint dried, i used paper towels to sort of wipe off some of the gesso so that you could still see the collage underneath.  it looked like this:




by now, a brainstorm had come to me.  so my next step was to make three separate collages that i would use in tandem with this one.  here they are:










after i made the three collages at my desired size, i then used acrylic paints to repeat the process i used before with the gesso.   i painted over each collage with a different color, and then used paper towels to wipe off excess paint, leaving the collage underneath visible.  the results of that process were these:










so after i had these, i took a steelers logo that i had and magnified it on a copier to a huge size.  then i used one of the hypocycloids (the diamonds on the steelers logo) as a pattern.  i used the pattern to trace the hypocycloid on each one of the three colored collages, and then cut out the shape.  i then arranged the three hypocycloids on my original white collage in the shape of the steelers logo, and glued them on.  after a final coat of matte finish, and a frame, the end result was this: 




"hypocycloid"
mixed media collage
gregory a. milinovich

i was really happy with how this turned out, and how i was able to make a steelers collage that still felt like it fit my style.  my friend was happy with it, too, and he said his friends really liked it as well.  it's always a challenge when you are commissioned, because you are never sure if what you make is going to match the commisioner's vision, but in this case i felt really good about it. 

Comments

Max02 said…
The whole time I was waiting for you to say that your friend commissioned it as a gift for you. Oh well.
Crafty P said…
that is really great! and I learned a new word: hypocycloid!
Mrs. Milinovich said…
good job as usual greg. the steelers would be proud!
Anonymous said…
you could probably market that product to the Steelers... it is so polished. this is one of my favorite collages you have EVER done. so impressed!
peggy said…
very cool, greg! interesting to read the "steps" in your creative thought process. i wonder what you might have done had you been commissioned to create something for a steeler rival. it would be interesting to observe the artist in conflict with the steeler fan!
Emoly said…
that is pretty cool.

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