Painting over Collage - Week 6

This week on Life Book 2012 was a Workshop with Tamara Laporte using paper collage on watercolour paper.  Tam uses gel medium to stick her collage paper down, but unfortunately I don't have any, so I used PVA glue, which gets a bit messy!!  The idea was to paint with watersoluble crayons over the collage, except for the 'figure'.  So you could actually change the figure entirely, you use blended acrylics with the crayons (I think - it is some time since I looked at the video!!)  Anyway, as I got so messy with the PVA, and knowing it dries clear, I thought I would paint a watered down gesso all over it before I started to paint (BAD idea!)

Here we have a scan of my finished collage page.

Here we have the same page, now gessoed (you can hardy see the images underneath the gesso) and my drawing of the mermaid over the top of the image.  The watersoluble crayon, when adding the water, slid all over the place, and of course you could see my brush strokes through it!  I persevered, adding the scrylis to the figure, which thankfully did stay in place.

Hey Presto!  The finished page, but nothing like it would have been if I'd followed all Tam's instructions.

I'm very new to collaging with papers, and still haven't made up my mind whether I like doing it or not, but I am quite happy with this result.

I wonder what is in store for next week.....

Till next time.

Week 5 - Self Portrait from a photograph

Yeah! Yeah!  Before you take a sneaky look at my painting, there is a little artistic licence, I must admit.  No, not really, just that I used a picture of myself taken about 30 years ago.  Well, this week it was about our inner self, and I still feel a lot younger on the inside than I look on the outside!!  Anyway it was great fun, and the Workshop was by Kylie Fowler, an Australian Portrait Artist.  There are over 1000 of us who have signed on for this Life Book 2012, so from the tutor's point of view it must be extremely difficult to meet everyone's expectations, impossible I would say!  Kylie started the video with two black and white computer printed photos the same, but one was a mirror image.  We then cut out just the face of the mirror image and transferred it onto the watercolour paper using gesso - this was a first for me. (I'd done it on fabric - not with gesso though)  I rubbed rather too much of my face away, but it didn't matter, as the original was there for you to draw the face back in(with biro).  The idea was to make a type of cartoon, and fill in whatever you wanted for the hair and body etc. adding a crown or something, as this was representing your Inner Goddess! 

Kylie's second video was using a printout of her face, stuck onto watercolour paper and then colouring with watersoluble crayons.  She used all sorts of weird colours on her face, like olive green, prussion blue and red, as well as flesh, orange and yellow etc.  I decided to have a go on my face, and was quite delighted with the results.  Kylie's face was obviously still smooth paper when she coloured it, and mine was very 'rubbed up' and rough, but even so, the result of the weird colours I tried stll surprised me, which was the best bit of the whole exercise for me.   I'm really not into collaging - not yet anyway!!
If you want to join in the fun, click on the moving Logo - it's still not too late!
Till next time .........