Category: Collage

The unglamourous part of making art

Behind the scenes this week…
I’ve been using torn bits of my drawings as collage material in my new mixed media pieces. After brushing the back of the paper with acrylic gel medium and placing the paper where I want it, I flatten it with a piece of wood and weigh it down with something heavy – in this case, gallon paint cans. I typically let it sit overnight so that it’s ready to go in the morning. Once dry, I can work on the paper and panel with paint, ink, pastel, or whatever other medium I choose to use on it. With these particular pieces I am not using oil paint. This allows me to keep the paper exposed because I don’t have to prime the paper to protect it from the oil paint.

New house, new studio

I haven’t blogged in a while. We bought a house this spring/summer, have been settling in, and getting the studio (in my case) and darkroom (in Tim’s case) going. The studio feels good. We insulated it, put up homasote, and I recently prepared a bunch of new panels to work on a series. I’m working on mixed media collage pieces using some drawings I made last week. Mix of Sumi ink, acrylic, watercolor, gouache, pastel, graphite, and markers. I’m trying to keep the works on panel pared down – which is hard for me because I have a tendency to want to bury layers of paint and drawing and build up the surface. We’ll see what happens…

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