 |
| NUMBERS, a series Collage 5" x 5" x 1.25" |
As summer winds down I realize that it's time to return to blogging. Taking nearly three months off was good for me but since I enjoy writing and have actually made some art I figure it's time for some show and tell.
Working with the idea of strips, bands, stripes, slices led me to experimenting on a smaller scale, working on 5" x 5" cradled canvases. I discovered some things that might interest the collage artists among you.
Canvas isn't the best surface for collage. Save canvas for paint. Because it's a rough surface, even gessoed, the papers don't adhere well unless I really slather on the gel medium. Thin acrylic medium doesn't work at all. The solution was to glue thin paper, sort of an underpainting, to the canvas, working it into the fibers of the canvas. Then I could glue my strips of paper to the new surface using just about any permanent glue. It would be better to use a wood panel or gessobord, stiff paper, or simply a block of birch as a substrate.
As I worked with small strips of paper, applying glue to each little strip, and then carefully placing it, messing up my manicure and frustrating me with the time it took, I thought of a better way.
- Using my old Xyron 850 adhesive laminating machine with it's 8" wide double sided adhesive I fed sheets of my collage papers through the machine. The results gave me paper with a peel-and-stick backing. Now I can cut the strips however wide I need them to be, peel off the protective backing and stick them in place. Easy-peasy.
- Another kind of adhesive backing is a product called Gudy-O, available through Talas, but the Gudy-O isn't as easy to manage as the Xyron, though it's still available. This particular Xyron machine is no longer made but a similar product is the Xyron 900.
- Perhpas some of the iron-on interfacings intended for fabric could be used for collage. If you try the fusible interfacing let me know how it works with paper. If I try it I'll report my findings.
 |
| Ever A Good Thing Collage 5" x 5" x 1.25" |
