Fantasy Flowers

 

Jo Reimer: Fantasy Flowers  14x11" acrylic, watercolor, ink, paper

Sometimes a piece comes out of left field and insists upon being present within my body of work. This started one morning last year as I was dinking around with paint and a brush, just spreading color around and seeing where the wet paint would go. It got ugly fast so I put it away thinking I still had one side of the paper I could work on.  

Months later I spied it among the "works in process" drawer and decided to play on it with some ink. Hours and days later this is what emerged. I could keep working but I won't. It delights me just as is. The only bit of collage is the big yellow rose that satisfied the need for a place to rest my eyes.

Painting Collage Papers. a tutorial

 

Ironing painted paper

My friend laughs at me for ironing my papers. But ironing them makes the paper flatten back out after they're painted and they're easier to store and use.

I spent an evening recently painting some papers in the color range that I need for a planned collage. It takes time to do paint my own papers to build my palette but it's necessary for my process and lots of fun. 

Painted Papers, ready to use in collage

Here's one of the methods I use to prepare some of my painted papers.

I start with plain white paper: blank copier paper and paper from laser printers (not ink jets), washi, printmaking papers, art tissue, tracing paper, pages torn from discarded books, and music  from old song books and hymnals, pages torn from old phone books and dictionaries. Just about any papers can be used except for cheap papers that fall apart in water (toilet paper, paper towels, regular tissue paper, tissues). I've saved some of the colorful paper towels that I use in the studio but rarely do I use them because of the rougher texture, though some people use these with great success.
 
 I use watery mixtures of acrylic pigments including fluid acrylics, acrylic inks, and airbrush acrylic (aka Golden's Hi-Flow).

And here's how it works for me:
 Mix the pigment with water, about 1:4. about 1-2 oz total should do the trick. Wear rubber gloves.

• Work on a large tray of some sort. I use several old school lunchroom trays.
• Place white paper on a sheet of plastic and get it fairly wet by spraying with water.
• Using a pipette or straw or brush drop the color onto the paper, spraying and brushing to encourage the paint to flow over the paper. I like random rather than all over solid color.
• Cover this paper with another sheet of plastic. Repeat the above steps. Repeat and repeat, building up the layers of paper and plastic.
• Set aside for several hours or overnight to allow the colored pigments to flow over the paper, to settle in creases, to form patterns of color.
• Before unwrapping the papers/plastic spread out large sheets of plastic over floors and furniture on which to set your painted papers for drying.
• Wear rubber gloves.
• Peel each sheet of paper off the plastic and set over on your drying surface. If there's pigment left on the plastic you can blot it up with another piece of absorbent white paper such as washi.
• Once all the paper has been transferred to the drying surface it's a waiting game. The paper dries very quickly outdoors in warm weather but it takes overnight to dry indoors in winter.

 Ironing has been completed and paper is ready to use.

If you, dear reader, make some papers using this method, please send me a photo so I can brag on you.

Summer Day, a painting

by Jo Reimer

Summer Day
acrylic, ink, paper, 12 x 12 panel

I've been having a grand time taking half-done paintings and seeing how I can resurrect them. Like this one.  I loved the hot colors but simply couldn't seem to figure out how to make anything of it.  Finally I simply started playing, adding and subtracting elements. This is the result. It looks great in a simple black frame.

Available Paintings

Striped Paper with a Smocking Pleater

Years ago I bought a Reed Pleater, a hand crank machine that’s loaded with threaded needles through which one runs fine cotton fabric to prepare it for smocking little girls dresses. I wanted to use it for dyeing fabric, sort of like Arashi Shibori, a Japanese resist method of dyeing where one wraps fabric around a pole and then squishes it down to make very tight pleats which are then brushed with dye or dipped into a dye bath.

Well, I never got around to doing faux-Shibori and a few weeks ago I sold my pleater on eBay. The sale fell through and the pleater came back home, but before trying to sell it again I had the bright idea of running paper through it to make lines of holes or parallel lines of stitched threads in paper and fabric which I will use in collage.

This project is just what I needed to get my creative juices going again. I’ve been working with the pleater and Japanese rice paper, Washi, and then spray dyeing the tightly pleated fabric. It works. It’s beautiful. I’m onto something, though it is labor intensive and right down my alley.

If you like to sew but don’t have a pleater simply get out your large eyed needles and some heavy linen thread and make lots of parallel running stitches in some lightweight paper. Pull the threads tight and dye the paper either with spray watercolor or calligraphy inks. Or use a brush and whatever water-based paint you have handy and paint the ridges on each side. Let it dry. Remove the threads. Voila! You’ll have unique striped paper.

Shall I tell you how many needles I broke trying to run a doubled sheet of paper through the pleater? Nah! Just don’t do as I did. Stick to thin paper and feed the paper or fabric through slowly.  I used color here, spray watercolors, but my next experiment will be with black ink to see what wonderful black and white images I can create. I'm thinking that if I gather the paper as above and then wrap the bundle tightly with some heavily threads before I spray the ink I'll have more uneven patterns that will be quite useful.

I’d love to hear about your experiments if you try this.

The well known teacher of Shibori, Anna Lisa Hedstrom, wrote an article for Threads about using a pleater for Shibori. Find it in Issue #69, March,1997.