The curse of being an over analytical perfectionist

I suppose that might be a good thing at times, but most of the time it probably is not. I suppose being a perfectionist leads to being over analytical. At any rate that’s what I’m stuck with when creating art projects. 

I started pulling plastic bags for my streetcar recycle piece and find I cannot possibly create a blue gray piece from blue plastic bags. The blue bags are generally bright blues like teal, royal, and baby blue. I do have the dark blue needed for the sky, but not the rest of the piece that was proposed in this AI image.

So since I have to work with the limitations of plastic bags I decided to try a gray and blue combo. I have lots of gray bags.  Here’s that scheme in an AI image. So that’s my goal. Plastic bags are limited unlike fabric choices. I think gray and blue will be very good. 

Of course the over analysis doesn’t stop with this project. I got to thinking about the surreal image again. Here’s the original idea followed by the new idea. The crow was just too ordinary in surreal art. Many readers liked the barn owl. Well he’s back……

Are you a perfectionist? Over analytical? 

Thanks for reading. 

Chris

What color scheme to use

I have 2 thoughts about what color scheme to use for a night time snow image for my recycle piece. Should I go with blues or grayscale. If I do grayscale the streetcar would still be red. Almost like it’s in an old black and white photo. I suppose the decision will be made for me by what plastic bags I have. That’s what I’ll be looking at today. 

Here’s the photo I’m working from and AI images showing the color schemes. I do like the blue one better, but blue bags are harder to come by. I do have a lot of gray bags left over from last years Raven piece.

The decision may be out of my control.

Thanks for reading.

Chris

You will be happy to know…

You will be happy to know that I’ve decided to use an actual photo instead of AI for inspiration for my recycle piece. It’s a photo of a streetcar crossing the Smithfield Street bridge. I will simply it a lot, turn it to night with snow, change the streetcar to one I rode, and get rid of the buildings in the background and put in the steel mills along the river. I’ve had this photo for a while so I’m not even sure where I found it online.

Here’s the photo. Since the streetcar I rode was the 35 Shannon Library.

“What Remains”

Once upon a time, Pittsburgh’s red and cream streetcars were an ordinary part of my childhood. I rode the Shannon–Library car to school, to Saturday art classes at the Carnegie Museum, and into the city. On this bridge, my grandfather once crashed the streetcar he was driving.

The mills that filled the horizon are gone, and so is the car I remember. I made this piece from discarded plastic bags — a material that refuses to vanish — to hold a place and a time that have.

Thanks for reading 

Chris

Before plastic

I just can’t get excited about any of these ideas that I’ve been creating. I definitely want the streetcar, but the rest of it was not working. I had to try something different with the streetcar. So here we are….empty wooden bench with a paper bag that has been left behind. I will be making this out of plastic bags which contradicts what these items were made from in the past. A paper bag made of plastic in my piece. A wood bench made of plastic. Now of course both are made of plastic. I thought about adding a glass bottle, but it might be too small in the image to know what it is. Of course it would add to the narrative since bottles are now plastic.

Thanks for reading.

Chris