Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Day Two of the Top 2000: "The Pretender..."

My choice for today's playlist on the Top 2000 is #1789: "The Pretender," by Jackson Browne.  I've been a major fan of Jackson's for my whole adult life.  I find his songwriting to be absolutely amazing.  Seeing The Pretender on the list for today, it was a no-brainer that this was my song of choice!

The Pretender was released in 1976, and has a completely different feel for me, than Magical Mystery Tour (yesterday's pick).  More urban, more bleak.  I tried to reflect that in my page.

Here's' how it turned out...
 
and here's a little bit of the process I went through for making the page...

The first thing I did was gather together colors that I felt represented the emotion of the song ...


Layer one of randomly brushing these colors onto the page...

some spray inks to make it even more grungy looking...

Then I decided we need some texture and contrast, so out came Julie Balzer's chevron stencil and some Ranger color wash...



At this point I did a google search for images of Jackson, that had the right "feeling" for the page.  I came up with these three...


I decided on the top left-hand image; printed it on matte photo paper, cut it out, and glued it down.  I added a few more elements with paint, and then chose the part of the lyric that represents the song best to me.  Here again, is the finished page...

and here's a video for the Pretender, where Jackson explains the meaning of the song before he sings it.  I love this...

To check out everyone's art for today, click here to go to Marit's Top 2000 headquarters!

Thanks so much for visiting!  Come on back tomorrow for day 3 of the Top 2000!

7 comments:

dawn said...

WOW WOW WOW!! I love this page and the background is amazing. Thanks so much for sharing the process of it, the layers/textures are wonderful. Always impressed with the way you use photos/images downloaded from the computer, I still haven't done that before. LOVE THIS!!

I saw yesterday's page too and of course it is AWESOME AWESOME!! I know you must love making these pages, it's pefect theme for you.
Thanks for sharing!

Julie Tucker-Wolek said...

This is amazing Michelle!!! LOVING the lyrics you used and loveeeeeeeee the chevrons in the background!!

Marit said...

Wonderful Michelle - you got exactly the right 'touch' with this page!!! Calling me 'headquarters' made me giggle! Enjoy the music dear!!! We're not even half way so days of fun still lay ahead - yaaayyy!!!

Jane Wetzel said...

Had to pop in and tell you...I am really enjoying your posts! tfs :)

phinner said...

Jackson Brown was HOT back in the day! : .P

I like those lyrics, still so true!!!

I gotta watch the vid so I can hear the explanation for the song...

Sharon Fritchman said...

Ahhhhhhh, Jackson Browne! Amazing!!!! Love your day 2!

Unknown said...

Amazing page-- love how you created the texture. So cool and that is one of my favorite songs.