collage – Page 14 – Mixy's Art Blog

words and colors

If you’ve visited here before you’ll have to noticed two of my favourite things are words and colors.

So dying a dictionary seemed the obvious thing for me to do.

editDSC_3130 — Flamboyant through to Flat, multiple ink stains

30 years ago this month I began high school.

30 years ago? Lordy!

editDSC_3123 — ink soaked paper napkin squashed between Shun and Side

Equipped with the essentials dictated by the school, I now owned a Pocket Oxford Dictionary.

editDSC_3143 — from Irk to Irresponible. Coffee painted on with teabag.

(At over 1000 pages and a good 2 inches thick, the average pocket size of an eleven year old child negated its title.)

editDSC_3135 — Lure to Machine. Dripped inks and dye water.

Nonetheless this book has travelled with me through the decades.

editDSC_3132 — Abbreviations to A. Squished inky paper

editDSC_3126 — Repay through to Reproach. More inky goodness.

Battered, dog-eared, with scribbled notes in the margins here n there…

editDSC_3128 — from Pylon to Quandry. Squashed strip of inky paper

… the spine went first but now it’s cover has separated totally from its papery wordfilled heart.

In it’s new incarnation – a colorful version of the former – it will one day become collage ingredients.

editDSC_3131 — Encode to Engine. Colorex inks

As an aside, I sometimes catch a glance of myself in my art room, as if from an outsiders perspective. I’m ironing torn, stained scraps of paper. Phrases like ‘not doing anyone any harm’ in bemused but sympathetic tones echo in my head. I smile. They just don’t understand. Anyway, I do it cos I have to and it makes me happy. Nuff said.

every last ounce of goodness

I’ve been dying fabric for the quilt lately. I’ve been dying fabric for years. It got me thinking: The only stage I don’t like is towards the end when the residue dye – as it’s no longer active – has to be poured away. Why? it’s mostly water. But something inside me winces, it’s beautifully colored water and I don’t want to waste a drop of color.

In my perpetual quest for ways to wring every last ounce of goodness out of every stage in a process, last week I had one of those why did I never think of this before epiphanies.

It’s no good to dye fabric with now, but it will dye paper!

Decanting the dye dregs into jam jars, rolling up scrap paper and standing them in the jar.

Then just let science take over: the water soaks in and climbs up the dry paper bringing the remaining pigment in its wake.

When they’re soaked through, or the water in the jar has dried up, or when I just need to clear some space I empty the lot into a bucket to finish intermingling and eventually dry.

It’s satisfying on so many levels: using up color, repurposing scrap paper, creating patterns for future collages and art works. It does it’s own thing when left to its own devices. It’s messy and unpredictable (just like me) And it’s effectively better than free!

More variations on the theme:

Dry paper, water-splashed paper, soaked paper (hot & cold water)
Letting the liquid soak part way up, then up-ending the paper so it runs down and creeps up at the same time
Pouring more color down the inside of the paper rolls
Using paper that’s been part printed on the inkjet so the colors merge and dribble into each other
Coffee dregs instead of / mixed with colored water
Just water + inkjet printed paper (but not laser printed – that ink won’t run)
Scrumpled paper for a veiny effect
Glossy photo paper (make good use of those expensive printer mistakes!)

ink dribbles

Remember the watermarked dyed paper ?

This week I’ve been playing with ink (quite a lot!) So it followed that where water does one thing, ink should do similar but with more colorful results!

I used Pebeo Colorex ink (Chartreuse. My fav color de jour!) they have a real glowing transparency and mouth-wateringly rich color! On pre-scrumpled paper they run deliciously through the landscape of the paper’s surface.

The quilt-making (more on that later) is my current obsession, and the urge to stitch is cropping up everywhere!

Home of the gunk bird

In all the fun of creating Gunk Bird I forgot to show you page he landed in!

The hairy/fluffy paper leftovers from the page before set the scene

Cut out shapes echoed in white pen

Gold foil blended in with copper acrylic paint

acrylic gunk bird

Y’know the gunk that builds up round the top of acylic paint bottles?

Y’know when the paint is copper color and it’s just so shiny and gorgeous that although it’s also dried up paint something inside you says No! Don’t throw that away! It’s pretty – stick it in the book!

Y’know when this happens on a day you’ve already started with a page covered in hairy paper that does have a certain feathery like quality?

Y’know when you look at the dried up copper color acrylic paint gunk that you stuck to the page and it looks back at you, demanding: OK, I just have an eye and a beak. You must make me a body with a tail and wings. Immediately!

Y’know? Y’know that feeling?

I knew you would…

That’s how this happened.

for the love of paper

Isn’t there something irresistable about paper? this page is centred around play with handmade paper. Not made by me I hasten to add – that’s a game I haven’t played (yet)!

It lends itself so well to roughly torn edgery, and as I discovered this week, tearing it when wet makes for even fluffier edges. Now I don’t remember what this paper is made from, it’s (I beleive) Indian and has super-long fibres. I painted it with Koh-I-Noor dye paints then gently tore it while it was still soggy.

The contrast on the magenta page really ZINGS!

I did the cut-out thing with a scalpel, the out-cut-bits then glued on top making multi-levelled layered shape, surrounded by doodle. With some more of the hairy edged paper and dyed envelopes glued to the underside of the page to show through the cut out holes, the next page was starting to take shape too. But more of that later.

Moments in the process

There is often a stage in the process where I look at the page and think WTF? What is going on? It might fly off on a tanget, or it might develop recognizably from here. But until it does, I have no way of telling…

Pushing on from this point gets easier every time. Like this…

Beginning the page with Black Gesso, some white writing and doodling. Tissue paper for texture.

Building up the shapes with slices of dyed envelopes

And some splashing – I used Dr Martin’s Bombay inks and some dilute acrylic paints.

And left to dry…

…to doodle on…

…and on…

to this! 😀

scrap-driven pages

Working in the way I do generates a lot of scraps and offcuts. There are days (most of them) when I have no idea where to begin or how the page will look. The scraps often decide this for me, and Day 33 is pure 100% scrap driven!

Along with the scraps I make there are scraps I save from the ‘outside world’ – labels, tickets, lists and quotes written on the backs of envelopes… these were the founding ingredients for day 34.

The quote that I made annoyingly illegible was from an unknown Sufi master: “May I overcome any bitterness that may have arisen because I was not up the magnitude of the pain I was entrused with”. Hearty food for thought.

Scraps make for textural interest too, in page 35 I used little torn rectangles to build up a layer of white on the blank white page, that’s where the linear forms began and the rest just happened!

upside-down-ery

editDSC_2660 — hole-punch holes make for old fashioned typewriter key style letters

I love the way ideas and moods will just flip upside down sometimes.

From a sure and steady point, no warning, suddenly everything is reversed, inside-outed. Its own antithesis.

Yesterday was strong and richly toned, uncoordinated, bloated with opulence and excess.

Today has a muted, balmy calm behind knotty labyrinthine lines.

Tomorrow? we’ll have to wait and see! 😉

now…. where was I ?

All that giddy excitement from last weekend (or some such excuse) meant I’ve not kept you updated on the page a day project – but I’ve not been so remiss as to let it slide!

Ready for a 10 day/page binge? Ok, here they come!

Day 29 (chronologically this day fell between Contrast (with buttons) and Quality Time)

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Although there are parts of this page I like – the colors and some parts of the composition, it has an overall feel of hurried chaos. Something too bitty and scrappy, but isn’t that the way of some days?!

Onward and upward to day 30!