Jan's Art and Musings

The fun part of collage for me is making the papers to use in the collage. Today, inspired by an article in ClothPaperScissors by Liz Berg, I used magazine pages, not just for the image as I usually do, but to paint. I used Esquire magazine because I don't like many of the images so I wasn't hesitant to paint over them. The first layer is matte medium. The next layer is Titan Buff paint (to begin to hide the image/text). For this I painted orange, wiped on red with a scrunched paper towel, followed by a layer of Nickel Azo Gold. With this final layer, I placed a piece of wax paper with lots of paint on it (where I clean off my brush, etc.) and rubbed it down. Some of the paint transferred from the wax paper to the new painted piece. I also did a monoprint with a textured painted cardboard.

This piece has the same two layers of matte medium and titan buff followed by a layer of Nickel Azo Gold. When that was dry I laid down crimson with a scrunched paper towel. This was followed by a layer of titan buff and a piece of saran wrap was layed down, scrunched up, and left to dry. I love the texture this created.


The blue piece had the same beginnings followed by a layer of blue paint. The page was already blue, so when I used a plastic fork to create the grid, it shows the lighter blue beneath.

BTW, the acryllic paint was mixed with the matte medium, equal parts. This extends the paint and makes it more translucent.

The green piece is actually a scan of the blue piece with a change in color in the scanning process. I'd not tried this before. I'll print this out on printer paper, put a layer of matte medium on it and it will be ready for collage. I love having these textured papers ready for use in collage.