Where I'm Heading

As readers of my blog might have noticed over the last several months, I have been delving into ways to add emotion to my photos using ‘non-standard’ lenses such as Helios and Lensbaby (and pinhole, though I haven’t yet captured anything that I have wanted to show in that genre). I have also been experimenting with ways to make unique pieces by using photographs as the underlying basis for mixed-media artwork. Of course, that artwork can be photographed and printed as well, but there still only remains one original.

My eyes have been opened by taking courses in mixed-media photographic work and finding that there are ways of turning photos into unique pieces using methods I either hadn’t known of or hadn’t thought that I could accomplish. Turns out that I was wrong about that, and over the last several weeks and months I have happily been producing mixed-media artwork that I quite like. In prior posts, I have shown several photo-encaustic pieces that I have made.

Pyramid © Howard Grill

The image above started as a black and white photograph that was printed on thick Arches watercolor paper and was then painted using watercolor and acrylic paints and embellished with watercolor pencils and pastels.

This is the direction I see my work moving towards…..hand-made one of a kind pieces. Of course, the photography is still there since the pieces all start with a photograph. So the photography certainly isn’t going anywhere. But it does raise some questions for me. Should I be setting up a separate website for the mixed media pieces? Are they too ‘non-photographic’ to be included in this photography website, which I already find a bit ‘congested’ for lack of a better word? How do I attract people that might be interested in such work to a website? Would most photographers be interested in seeing this type of work as well as ‘pure’ photography?

I suppose those questions are less important than actually making the work and learning more new techniques!