Unfinished Business: Art Table Collage

The other day, I took a look around the studio and started to make a list of projects I'd started and never finished. I'm often so excited by the prospect of starting something new that I drop everything I'm working on and get down to the new business, leaving several things at a time in various stages of completion. This is a very bad habit, and when I finally decided to take stock of my "unfinished business," I discovered just how bad it was. My whole STUDIO was full nearly finished projects! So I rolled up my sleeves and started working on the most noticeable: my art table.

This table started its life as a cheap, three-drawer nightstand my grandma had lying around her house. When I complained about not having a nightstand in my room at my parents' house several years ago, she gave it to me. After moving out, I had a bit more room to stretch out and the nightstand became a storage unit for my art supplies, but it wasn't very ... inspiring. Conveniently, I had a bunch of old comic book magazines lying around, just waiting to be thrown away. Instead, I broke out the scissors and starting weeding through the pages for favorites from the past...

I started by painting over the boring wood on the front with some black and white paint. It matched the theme I was going with a little better. Then I used some of the smaller images on the drawers. I took the handles off before the collaging and just punched them through the paper when they were dry.

For the sides, I used some bigger images (like covers and full/half page pictures) to cover more ground. I separated them a bit with some black outlines to sort of give each image its own "space".

I took a bit of a different approach to the top. I found one cover that I really liked (a three-panel fold out cover painted by Alex Ross) and made that the center piece. I framed it with some smaller images, and drew a black border around the outside edge of the "frame" to keep things separated.

And there you have it! The finished product! It feels pretty good to be able to mark at least that off my to-do list, not to mention it's fun to look at. Next on the list ... some cross stitching!

Until then, enjoy! And remember, finishing stuff is good and good for you!