Paper Collage

I mentioned recently that I've been working with Jane Davies' DVD, Scribble Collage.  I spent a few days last week painting papers, and earlier this week I made eight small collage studies using those papers.  The collages are 7-1/2 x 11 inches, on 140# watercolor paper.

The studies aren't finished pieces, they're just play.  Seeing how papers work together, experimenting with collage structures.

The only caveat to what I've learned from Jane about painting papers is that sumi ink is still ink.  She'd said it dries like acrylic, but it doesn't.  The ink rewetted when I glued those papers down with matte gel medium, and there are ink smudges on the background paper.  Once I realized this, I tossed out those few sheets of paper where I'd used sumi ink.  Next time I try that technique, I'll use watered-down acrylic ink.  (Note: a dear reader informed me that some sumi inks these days have shellac in them, rendering them waterproof.  Clearly, mine did not.)

new painted papers

On today's agenda ~ fire up my Gelli plate.  I'm also in the process of building another book to house Gelli offprint pages for a new art journal.  I loved the one I finished recently (from which I've been posting pages lately) and want another one like it.  Of course, none of the empty-but-waiting newly altered book covers will work for the pages I want to use.  So I'm making a book from scratch which will have a hard spine (which means, I think, that it will be a case bound book), but the signatures will be stitched onto the spine, which is not typical of case bound books.

I realized recently that the best way for me to tackle new creative areas is to move around between things.  I always think I want to move completely through something, like try everything I want to from a new book or DVD before moving on to something else.  But it doesn't work that way in my reality.  I'll get pulled off to something else before I go back to the original thing.  But then it's like going back with fresh eyes, and I see that I've progressed when I pick up the first thing again.  Which is a good thing.