It’s 5am as we post this but a late night ‘Art Jam’ session at  this year’s Baby Tattooville art  retreat capturing the spirit and anxiety of the collaborative process (in unscheduled and unpredictable turns) has us motivated.

One of the challenges in a collaborative piece featuring contributions from so many artists is the need to mesh the parts into a cohesive whole.  This task was squarely front and center as they worked past 2 AM on Friday night. Black paint was added and blended  over the brighter yellow background areas apparently to reduce the hotspot effect and lend to a more balanced look.  Part of the process involved the potentially sensitive issue of altering others’ work — whether it meant changing the siren’s hair from a bright orange to a more subdued dark green, adding a gorgeous ethereal eye to the bull or  the difficult  yet holistically aimed   decision to wash out a  roughly rendered character.  The session ended with attendees curious as to what changes would come next – the only certainly is the unexpected.

See this process unfold in the photo gallery after the jump.