Collage and Paint Mixed Media

This week, I decided to combine the two processes, from the last two blog posts, into one picture. I thought that the two techniques would combine nicely to create multi-layered artwork. (You can read Abstract Collage Art here and Pressing and Printing Paint here.) I thought it would be a good way to continue exploring ideas of composition and balancing, using two very different methods. Collaging is intentional and thought out, where as the flattening paint process is much more random, which makes it interesting to try and use those two techniques together. I thought the interplay between the geometric shapes of paper collage and the more organic paint shapes make for some interesting pictures.

For a couple of pictures, I started with basic collage and added paint layers.

For another picture, I started with paint and then added collage elements.

For some others, I started with paint, added collage and then added more paint.

In this one, I added some gold pen mark making to see what that looked like.

And in this one, after my layer of paint/collage/paint, I added another layer of collage.

Not all of these worked as well as others did, but I definitely liked this way of working. It was especially fun to build up each layer and see how the results came out, particularly because of the random nature of the paint pressing. Unfortunately, there were definitely times that I felt I’d ‘ruined’ a piece by adding too much paint or not putting the paint where it should have gone, but that is the point of doing this: to learn what does and doesn’t work.