The collages I make each day for the Los Dias Contados website have simple backgrounds -- usually white or black. The focus is on the strange objects in the foreground. I like the surreal effect of these pieces. (You can see them all here in my Flickr feed.)
But in my collage workshop, we spend most of our time creating layered backgrounds using different techniques -- stenciling, printing, painting, writing, and more. To practice these techniques, I made myself a blank art journal out of an old hardback book and a variety of papers.
Here's how the first 2 spreads in the book evolved.
Layer 2: To harmonize the 2 pages, I added a thin layer of yellow-tinted gesso.
Layer 3: I sketched 2 faces using paint markers. The background is barely visible.
Layer 2: I stenciled orange circles on top of the paper bits.
Layer 2: For the foreground, I chose black and white photos from a vintage doll catalog.
Layer 2: To make the dolls pop, I drew black boxes and filled in the background with yellow oil pastels.
But in my collage workshop, we spend most of our time creating layered backgrounds using different techniques -- stenciling, printing, painting, writing, and more. To practice these techniques, I made myself a blank art journal out of an old hardback book and a variety of papers.
Here's how the first 2 spreads in the book evolved.
SPREAD 1
Layer 1: I started with paper, paint, and tissue paper.
Layer 2: To harmonize the 2 pages, I added a thin layer of yellow-tinted gesso.
Layer 3: I sketched 2 faces using paint markers. The background is barely visible.
SPREAD 2
Layer 1: I started with torn pieces of Gelli-printed dictionary pages.
Layer 2: I stenciled orange circles on top of the paper bits.
Layer 2: For the foreground, I chose black and white photos from a vintage doll catalog.
Layer 2: To make the dolls pop, I drew black boxes and filled in the background with yellow oil pastels.
So cool! I love the portraits. It is so much fun to see how one takes what one has created to the next level. Just fantastic!
ReplyDeleteThanks, John! And thank you for teaching me so much about collage!
Deletelove your backgrounds and paint marker portraits. I just bought a bunch of paint markers for that purpose, but I don't really know what I'm doing, and have been having dumb "failure anxiety", so I haven't had the courage to try it yet. Yours look so free and fun!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Lynn. To make it easier, I started by assigning each marker to a different value (I was sketching from black and white photos). One was darkest black, one was lightest grey, with a few in between.
DeleteSo yummy. I love layers!
ReplyDeleteMe too!
Delete