{"id":19934,"date":"2025-07-24T11:32:29","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T15:32:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/jadixon\/?p=19934"},"modified":"2026-01-17T15:47:39","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T19:47:39","slug":"not-plein-air-but-whos-keeping-score","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/jadixon\/archives\/19934","title":{"rendered":"Not plein air, but who\u2019s keeping score?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe key is not to imitate life,
but to create it anew.\u201d
\n\u2014 Lalo Schifrin
 \n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Although I spent eight hours outside on the miniature featured below, it required too long an indoor refinement period for it to earn a plein-air designation. The process is what matters, and who\u2019s keeping score anyway? The limitations of paper demand a process not overly dependent on what I actually see. So I put imitation aside and follow my Third Rule of Collage: \u201cIntuition is worthy of your trust.\u201d<\/p>\n

Working in the sun dries my paste, but I found myself looking for shade when I got to DayCrest Farm. I picked a spot with plenty of depth that overlooked rows of poppies, lavender, and sunflowers, and I took a reference shot<\/a> on my feet. When I sat down with my rig, I could barely see the lavender. Moving nearer, a new composition photo<\/a> was closer to what I wanted, and I boosted the hues<\/a> as I picked my colored papers.<\/p>\n

I had mounted an old, ruined book cover as a substrate. It bled upward into a crumpled sky wet with paste. The unusual effect<\/a> set a tone for the interpretation, which I carried forward with a more active horizon and a bold base of color. I liked how an accident helped tie the whole thing together back in the studio. When I integrated the dappled sky with moody clouds and represented analogous flowers, the top linked itself chromatically to this horizontal band of lavender<\/a>. The additional poppies at the base provided a fitting contrast with my chosen shades of green. Except for the unexpected bleed, all color comes from the scrounged paper itself, with no added paints or pigments.
\n 
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Poppy Solstice<\/em><\/strong>
\nscrounged paper collage by J A Dixon
\nvintage book cover on structure
\noutside start, DayCrest Farm, KY<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe key is not to imitate life,but to create it anew.\u201d \u2014 Lalo Schifrin   Although I spent eight hours outside on the miniature featured below, it required too long an indoor refinement period for it to earn a plein-air designation. The process is what matters, and who\u2019s keeping score anyway? The limitations of paper […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51,1,160,22,18,551,249,35,678,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/jadixon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19934"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/jadixon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/jadixon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/jadixon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/jadixon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19934"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/jadixon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20351,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/jadixon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19934\/revisions\/20351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/jadixon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/jadixon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/jadixon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}