New Artwork Coming Soon

Mixed Media Pattern Collage, Entitled "His Favourite" (Unfinished, work in progress.)

I haven't blogged in a little while, and that's because I've been exclusively working on a new set of art pieces to add into the shop. As I said before, I've marked down ALL of my jewellery to make room for new artwork (and possibly new confetti come springtime!) I already have three pieces in the works at this moment. 

(This one above being one of them.) 

Lately I've been trying to get our art room organized. When you have two artists living under the same roof and sharing a tiny space, things get out of control fast. There are pencils and paints and brushes in every box and area possible. I couldn't tell you where anything is exactly. So this January my goal was to get this area cleaned up. Regrettably, that stopped fast when I found my old portfolio and found some new inspiration in it. 

I only really held my unfinished pieces in there. The ones I was stuck on and couldn't bring myself to finish. In fact a lot of them are from high school. It's always weird to look back on your old work, don't you think? I feel like I know my artistic path now and back then it was more like trial and error. I didn't have a real system for creating art. I felt like now I could be able to breathe new life into them, when I couldn't before. So now my thought was to take all the unfinished pieces I still loved, and transform them them with my current style. It almost feels like collaborating with my 18 year old self.

This piece in particular is from 2008. I was nearing the end of high school. I was at a very cool place in my life artistically. All I thought about was creating, and I really did spend all my time doing just that. This piece was a result of my constant work, but I never finished it. I always loved it's peachy tones and collaged circle of children sitting quietly in the bottom corner. Adding what I know now, I think, has made it even better than I could've made it five/six years ago. 

As you probably guessed, all my pieces will feature multi-layers of retro-inspired designs and patterns. There will be lots of collaging, lots of colour and lots of movement. I'm really proud of starting all these old pieces up again. It feels like such a sad waste to let them stay half-done. If I still feel something for them, why wouldn't I keep elaborating on them? 

Anyway I only wanted to share this unfinished piece with some of its new additions, so you can see what's kept me away from here for a while. I promise I've got so many pieces to wrap up and start photographing and/or scanning to list in the shop. I want to take CharmingShop in a new direction for 2014. This time with my art more in focus. 

Thanks for listening to my personal art rantings,

Marissa xo

P.S. If you want to see more of my art process, follow me on Instagram. (Click the link on the right side of my page.) It seems like my only posts these days are art posts!