is is the Ramble about the building of themes within the chop and toss technique.

 

What say you're a purple, blue and pink fan. You like feathers. Then make a skinner blend of purple, blue and pink and do jellyrolls and then reduce to a lace cane, lean it over for feathers, and that's one cane, set that aside. Take complimentary colors of red and white and do a skinner blend jellyroll and make a Leigh rose, set that aside. Take all your trim and chop and toss that. What else could you put with this theme? Flowers? Leaves? A bit of blue sky?

 

What say you like under the sea sort of themes. Well we have the abalone shell mix, that's one element. If you take different colors of blue and green and chop them in the food processor and keep it crumbly, set that aside as an element. What else is found in the sea? Coral, pearls, fish of all sorts. Do an angel fish with the zebra cane technique done as a chevron. Do wild blends of bright cobalt blue and bright yellow, jellyroll a ribbon of those two blended colors, but before you finish rolling you add a black snake of an eye. Want to get fancy you add a snake of black for and eye and add a half moon of glow in the dark under it. There are fish that have pockets under their eyes filled bacteria that glow in the dark as well. Reduce to the size you want the fish shape to be, and just slice those in disks. If you tossed abalone disks, crumbly sea water sprinkles, a bit of coral and pearl and then tossed in the fish. Give it all a toss and see what sort of under the sea randomness you can get. Oh sea weed, how could I forget sea weed?

 

What you choose, the shapes of the designs, the colors, that will put your personal touch on this technique. No two people come up with anything that looks remotely like any one else's. That's because we are picking our favorite colors, our favorite themes.

   

Someone had said somewhere else that the Donna Kato make up brush project that was just on Carol Duval was "labor intensive".

 

I say don't even think that way. You can't count the steps you just got to keep on keeping on, catching the vision that is in your head, capture those colors, make those canes that have significance to you. And go chop and toss and find images.

 

When you find a mirror image it will suggest a scene. If you see a figure in the scene push it from the back and bring it forth. If you see that a part of the scene is in the background of what you see then from the front bend that part back and away from your figure in the foreground.

 

Make a mounds of clay balls that make forehead, cheek bones, chins and noses and drape a sheet over it with the face you found in the patterns of the mirror image.

 

That's where you can take this. If you've never met Beary the LoungeBear, now's a good time.

His face is chop and toss left overs from the Sassy the Cat Cane,

 his loud suit is made with Tongues of Fire in the Manderin Mandalla style. 

 

He's a louse, and we've all met him at one time or another. LOL

 

In summary, I look at the whole process of chop and toss as seen in the new album as "prep". Like you prep food before cooking a big dinner. Getting it to the point where there are mirror images to work with is just the beginning. Or the end of the beginning like Churchill said,

 

"This is not the end. This is not the beginning of the end. Suffice it to say this is the end of the beginning."

 

I have three ceramic tiles of things made with this mix. All I can think of is the next mix I want to make.