Collage is never dull -- Making 40+ abstract backgrounds in just 15 minutes

Altered magazine page
Tuesday was another half-day collage class, hosted by artist John in his well-stocked and well-ventilated garage. It was over 80 F outside (which qualifies as heat emergency in the Northwest), but we stayed cool amidst our paper scraps, matte medium, solvent and stencils.

Today's lesson was surface transformation. That's a fancy artist term for changing the material you're working with -- paper, fabric, whatever.

We spent a good part of the day in distress. Well, in distressing -- transforming pages of National Geographic into abstract images. Like these.
Altered magazine page

Citrasolv

It was almost too easy. We slathered Citrasolv, a citrus-based solvent, on each page of the magazine and then let it dry.
Cirtrasolv
After 15 minutes, we pulled out the pages and let them dry on John's lawn. 
laying out pages to dry
And in his bushes.
laying out pages to dry
Some of the pages looked like images from the Hubble Space Telescope.
laying out pages to dry
Most of mine weren't as dramatic. I was too stingy with the Citrasolv, I think. The more you pour on, the more dramatic the effect.
Altered magazine page

Altered magazine page

Altered magazine page
The Citrasolv manufacturer's site includes detailed instructions  and videos on this technique as well as other surface treatments, and an artist gallery.

Never Dull

Next John showed us how to use Never Dull, a silver polish, to selectively remove ink from magazine pages.
Never Dull
We used Elmer's glue as to mask off parts of the image we didn't want to erase. After the glue dried, we applied the Never Dull. The ink came off easily.
Altered magazine page
To create the image below, I put a stencil on the original image and covered the open space with glue. When I used the Never Dull, the stencil shape was revealed. I started with a photo of a line of race boats.
Altered magazine page

Using altered pages as background

In the last hour of the workshop, we created a new spread in the art journal we'd started in the first session. We used the pages we'd altered for the background. Here's mine.

Comments

  1. Wow - what fun! I've used Citrasolv to clean my stencil brushes from using Shiva Paintstiks (on fabric). I'll have to try this next time I have the Citrasolv open.

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    Replies
    1. I forgot to mention -- the National Geo has to be 1993 or later. It's the right kind of ink.

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  2. I discovered more tips from another artist using Citrasolv:
    http://balzerdesigns.typepad.com/balzer_designs/2014/07/art-journal-every-day-making-art-papers-with-citra-solv.html

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