Lessons

Lesson Info

Background Collaging

It's important to get the canvas covered all of it covered to begin with and how we're going to do that we're going to take some jell medium this is a magical medium I like using matt because if I want to add something glossy afterwards I can always spray finish over top that makes it all glossy that matt is the consistency of it's flat it's like paper and so it really disappears into the background and we're going to be using a used an old gift card to apply our medium and this jar is pretty small I buy this stuff by the gallon and I read loaded into these bottles from a restaurant supply company so that I can apply it really easily, but if you're working in a smaller jar like this, I apply my medium with a used gift card and when the jar is too narrow for the big gift card to fit in, I'm just slicing the edge off so here's how I'm going to apply it I'm in a dip my applicator tool I would say it's not a gift card anymore than applicator tool I'm going to apply it to the back side of t...

he paper it's important that every bit of the back of the paper has this medium on it hey don't don't be skimpy on it because what's going to happen is if you're skimpy on it, you're going tio end up with bubbles and ripples and puckers, and that may not be your intention. We're going to add texture and later, but let's not let's try to not have it be unintentional texture. We're going to be really intentional with her texture, so we're going to get this paper down now notice as soon as I add the medium to the back side of the paper, it starts to curl up that's great! That means that the moisture of the media miss soaking into the paper and that's going to make it lay down nice and flat, so now I'm gonna take wet side together, the wet side of the back of the paper wet side of the canvas and I'm going to join the two I'm turning this around because one edge of it is square and I'm going to do this piece without wrapping around the corners. I'm just going to come straight out to my edges because I'm going to paint the edges out, so I'm not worrying about wrapping it then I'm going to take my card and I'm gonna scrape overtop I'm gonna press down firmly because what I'm doing is getting all the excess medium out from behind and a little layer is going over top of everything now this I've got a lot of medium going on here, so use the card right? It's not art okay, but that's ok, I'm going to use all of that so there's no waste, but this method of applying the medium to the back side of the paper, the surface of the canvas and over the top is really the best method to get your paper to stick down flat and I'm gonna continue to build this out. Most of the time, I will have kind of laid this out before I start gluing down, but I really want you guys to see how to glue it down so you can get started everything into place I prefer in my own thesis for things to be linear that means lined up straight rather than at an angle doesn't mean that you can't do your pieces at an angle. I just in the end, when I look at at at my own personal, our work, I like the way it looks better when I've done them lined up straight could be a personality quirk, it could be a design thing, I don't know, but I've done it both ways, and I'm always happier with it when it's lined up straight there's so much stuff going on that I figure the angles my engineer husband says if there's no reason to put it in an angle don't so, um, the angles just add to that kind of chaotic feeling to me and doing one slightly overlapping that's really a great question kate slightly overlap is great you can always come back if you've got a little gaffe you can always come back and add a bit overtop but slightly over laughing as you go it's fine so I'm also mixing up not only my mixing up colors I'm mixing up scale so I've got some big pieces and some tiny pieces right next to each other so you see this part right here is really tiny so I'm gonna put something with a big pattern right next to it I've also been asked where do you start? You start in a corner and you start in the middle sometimes I start in the middle and work out because it's easier to end up with straight edges are you know overlapping get that straight edges this time I'm just starting a one corner and going so there's really no right or wrong is just whatever you start with this fight. So what other things do you think you could dio with your recycled art? So you you've spent the time to make something you really love the way that it looks um other things that you can make our, uh, fabric fabric is one thing that comes to mind some pieces of art there's a one piece of art that I have in my studio that when everybody looks at that they say I have love that I would love to have fabric out of that I thought, wow, I'm going to go ahead and try that so what I did this is similar to what what the piece looks like in the peace in my studio it's huge and so what I did is I actually took a picture really good quality picture off that the art itself and then I uploaded it there's many web sites that you can upload tio that will print fabric for you. The one that I chose was soon flower so I was able to upload my my photo to spoon flower and then order fabric. Well, now this I think I did something wrong in the upload process, but I think it came out beautiful. I love the colors. Can you see that? Fantastic. The scale is a little bit larger. I think I just need to be a little more technical savvy tio figure out the scale process on their website, but now I've got this beautiful fabric that came from a piece of art that I did so I could make things like throw pillows for my for my couch or canvas tote bag, right an apron, how fun with an apron be made out of that there's all kinds of things you can make with your art another thing that we do, the reason that we that I even had that piece of art is, I do a collaborative workshop with a on artist friend of mine. Her name is julie valentine, and every year we dio four sessions of this art retreat called the juicy soul retreat, and so every year we do a piece of collaborative art work together, and that fabric came from our collaborative piece of artwork that we did. We also take that our work and use it as a graphic for our postcards for a retreat, we also use it as a graphic for our digital representation. So are online graphics, so we take the art and we repurpose it and reuse it for many, many different things. So that is another example of recycling your are in what you can use it for fabric, postcards, digital like buttons on my website. And but wait there's more sometimes it's not even just the art that I'm taking pictures up sometimes believe it or not, the tools that I'm using end up looking so cool, I kid you not. I can't tell you how many times I put the pallets out on the work space of the students and like, oh, somebody left their art here, I'm like, no honey, that's your palate that you're going to work on today, but don't these look cool? I mean who would think this is just a palette that we scored pain out on and paint from but it starts to build up this layer I can throw this on my scanner scan it and print it out and now I have collage paper and whether that come from totally unintentional it's just my tool same thing for stencil stencils buildup layers of paint this is believe it or not this is the paint layer peeled off I know you're laughing at me because you know when I did this this's the pain layer peeled off of my stencil but it looks really cool I can layer it over top of something else and take a picture of it now you guys all before this class I'm gave me a quote I asked you for a quote you can take your quote which we're going to use in this particular class but you can layer you could print out on a transparency you can print out your quote on a transparency kate this is yours right so you can layer it, put it on a transparency and photocopy it again right now you've got the words layered over top but I can audition this I can say this would look good on that one doesn't look good on this one maybe it's a little too dark right there was a look good on this might be the original one that I did ok so this is great but wait there's more okay now image transfer is also something I love to dio I love to print something out and transfer it to something different like a tote bag so here is recycling my art this is actually a little four by six canvas this image right here started out four by six I laid it on my scanner I printed it out and I did image transfer to the surface now as a bonus for this class we're going to get the instructions very much transfer we're not going to go over how to do it in here but that is going to be a bonus for this class learning how to transfer your images to the surface of other things like canvas ok you could do it on a tile you could do it on all kinds of things here's the here's the trick when you do image transfer I'll tell you this right now your words need to be reversed thus I printed out the words on the transparency look at that magic no digital needed I lay it down on my scanner or printer photocopy machine photocopy this now my words are automatically without having to have any of that digital savvy like how do I flip my words in further shop it's pretty easy but let me just say doing it this way even easier okay so then I can print this out and image transfer that to the surface of any fabric? I could put that on the front of an apron, whatever I want lots of different ways to recycle. I'm so I love the concept of recycling your work and there's just no limit to what you can do with it. And you guys are doing great. You've got your your canvases air coming along beautifully. Are you liking this process? It's kind like there's? No thought. It's very therapeutic there's no thought to it. You just lay it down and you're coming up with something completely different. But it came from something that you made. You're totally connected to it. It's not just collage paper that somebody else made or scrap of paper of it was printed. This is yours. Your original artwork remix remix that's right now when I explained this earlier recycle your art somebody said, oh, I love you know I love the idea of taking old paintings and doing that well, absolutely. If you had something that you don't love anymore, use that on the surface recycling collage right on over top of it with art that you do love with the price of canvases and stuff that's like that's. A great thing to do is taking old canvases that maybe, you know you don't love anymore and repurpose in them