Category: Collage

Day 556 A bit of Mixed Media

Leave a comment

     

What do you do with all thosepostcards  you pick up on your travels!? Mine usually stay in a cubby hole in the desk til I have a clean up and toss them. 

 
 Sad to say I the only thing I bought for this book was the Eiffel Tower on the front when we were in Les Andelys and of course the postcards. 

 
 I collected a lot of ephemera like the items on the back.  I have two bags full. I needed a map for the accordion part of the book. Did I bring ONE map back. Not a one. 

  
Luckily I found some copyright free maps on the internet and printed it out. I printed several but only used this one. 

  
The accordion was also made from the map.

  
Here’s a shot of the book with the accordion extended. Each postcard is backed with vellum so that you can journal on it about your trip.  Thinking I may glue some more of my ephemera in it. 

  
I have a large bag of stamps left from when I did a lot of mixed media. Could I find it?! After hours of looking I did and NOT ONE French stamp. Finally I did yesterday morning. An hour and a half of going thru the bag  – stamp by stamp – I finally found about a dozen. I actually had separated them back when I got them but put them in with the Italian stamps. 

 
   I had several that were larger than the rest and wanted to use them anyway so I cut them down and mounted them on some paper that I already had.  Since of course I now had a surplus of stamps I had to add a few to these pages. 

 
This is the book that has the directions for the accordion postcard book. Fairly easy to make. And only took about five hours to assemble. 

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret xxx 

Day 276 Church Lady 

Leave a comment

sometimes I wonder why everything I seem to paint is full of problems that I have to solve.  How is it that I screw up over and over.  Maybe it’s the universe hinting I should go back to painting with acrylics!? I dunno. 

 

 I painted three ladies or manikin heads with fancy hats. Church Lady is the third one.  I meant to post this one on Easter Sunday but got busy and didn’t quite get around to it.  You notice that quote?! Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.  That’s me and watercolor. Something is going to  invariably mess up.   

I painted her face THREE times. Can you believe that?! I truly did.  I had a lovely face and was doing the letterig on the side and my pen caught on the string and slung blips of brown ink all over her face and a bit on her hat. Groan. That’s all I could do. 

   

  

Here she is right before instarted the lettering. Worst thing is I hated the lettering when I had finished it. So I messed her up for nothing.  

I painted over the ink splats with white gouache and never could get her face right. So I decided to cut out a new face. I did. I cut out three or four. One even ended up painted. It never laid down right so I peeled it off.  Oh what a mess. 

Finally I painted the remains of  her original face out with Daniel Smith watercolor ground. The surface was ripped and lumpy. I thought hopeless.

  

I redrew her face with my Noodler flex non and De Artrementis brown document ink.  I painted her face for the third time. Finally I pronounced her done.  I lettered her with a brush and the brown ink. I also painted out the quote with yellow gouache. I thought church ladies was a lot more fun than that quote which ended up I the border. Oh I highlighted the hat and the eyes with white gel pen. 

 

 Oh.  I made a few more accordion books. That make seven. Stay tuned for a how to on the accordion books. 

Love that new Kuratake refillable pen in the picture . Now loaded with platinum carbon black ink. Super pen. Busy drawing my way thru my new S&B Zeta. Still need to paint them. 

Thanks for looking. 

Day 251 – The Brown Thrasher

2 Comments

i had three other things I meant to be working on today instead I drew more birds?! I have had a touch of bronchitis and was sitting on the den sofa feeling bad. I glanced out the window to see a huge brown bird on the back deck. He was at least five times as big as any bird out there. Thrashers are ground dwellers and I had only seen one once before on the deck though I see them in the yard a lot. 

And my sketchbook was in my purse so I grabbed a nearby piece of paper so as not to scare the bird off. 



I drew a few quick sketches before he flew off. 



Using my noodoee flex oen and De Artremis brown document ink I redrew him in my S&B Zeta and added another from memory. Then I painted them with gouache. I used English red, indigo, white and yellow Schminke. The best discovery I had today was that a filbert makes a great comma stroke. I used it to make all the brown marks on his chest. 

Thanks for looking!!

Day 250 – A Painted Collage  

2 Comments

Our art group took a paper collage class from the very talented Virginia Bojanowski. I painted one of my favorite subjects my sweet dog Zoe. 



Zoe 
5″x7″

Made from painted scraps of paper and old book paper. 

The following is a short version of how it was made. Of course Ginnie had bags of already painted stamped paper pieces that we could use to collage with or we would have been there for days!!  You could substitute any appropriately colored paper for the painted paper we used. 



First we drew our subject on the canvas. Usually a piece of 1/2″ or 3/4″ plywood is used for this but for expediency sake we used a canvas. 

Next we painted the background color.   After it was dry we stamped over it with a stamp. I used a marble texture stamp. 





Then we painted our subject in blocky colors. 



Last using  gel medium  we glued down many pieces of paper starting with the bottom layer to the top aka from her chest to scarf to ears, to dark side of head, to eyes, eyebrows, nose trying to get a 3 d effect.  Difficult to do on such a tiny piece of canvas ripping even tinier bits of paper. 

In Art 130 at UGA we had to copy an Old Master print assigned to us by our teacher. I got an A+ but my rooms floor  was littered with piles of pieces of Life magazine photos trying to match the exact colors. My poor roommate. 

Art 130 was a Josef Albers color theory class, a fascinating class and my favorite that year. 

Let us know if you want your favorite animal done!!

Anyway thanks for looking!!!