Two Collages

"Amber Moon"



"Blushing Moon"


I have completed two of the things on my recent list of artwork to make. Over the weekend I finished two collages. I have to say that not having done any in a while, it was a little bit tough getting back into it, and I spent a lot of time staring at the scraps of paper on my table. I'm happy with how they turned out overall, although of course I always see things I could have done differently. I sort of decided to make a diptych with these two pieces. I had so many wonderful paper scraps just waiting to be used, and I got to utilize them pretty well here. I spent a good portion of the time preparing my papers I was going to use for collage, and also preparing the old book covers which serve as my paper or canvas in this instance. I had a random assortment of paper that I wanted to alter the color of. For example, I had a navy blue shade of paper which I made a brownish-green by applying numerous coats of diluted bleach, and then applying numerous coats of strong coffee. It gave it a wonderful earthy tone. I did the same thing with the bleach on some dark brown paper which created the golden yellow color of the moon in one of the collages. Some of the paper was aged/stained paper from old music and book pages. It didn't need much altering because it already looked great. I also did some distressing of surfaces with sandpaper, but not too much. Overall, I did a lot of layering. Right now I have a big mess on the table to clean up, but with collage that's inevitable.

list of materials: India ink, graphite, gesso, coffee, bleach, cut paper, colored ink, charcoal on old book covers