Arctic Collage

We recently returned from Alaska, where we visited Barrow in the the high Arctic. The expansive landscape, clean air, and sparkling sea ice were beautiful. I kept thinking about how I could try to capture the "feeling" of the Arctic in an abstract painting. Today I thought, "Hey, that collage mini-journal would be a quick way to try out some ideas, since it is so small." It got to be so much fun that I just kept going for five hours. Then I thought, "Hey, I could have done a whole painting in that time!" Anyway, here are three photos of the Barrow landscape, so you can see what inspired me:

Apparently the Arctic had been in my mind, because I realized that a couple of mini-journal collages I made before the trip were very Arctic-like. This one has the "feeling" of the Arctic tundra from the air:

And this one looks like an Arctic sea with iceberg and the Aurora Borealis:

Here are the journal pages with my efforts to "capture" the high Arctic:

I think these two have the potential to become paintings:

And since I was on a roll, I finished up some faces I had begun before we left: