Redoing Projects
In between stitched collages, I really enjoy making glued ones. Because they’re relatively quick to make, they provide a nice creative activity when I don’t have time for something more involved.
Recently, I made a four-part piece to hang above our new large screen TV. (You can see a photo in my June newsletter.) I was pretty happy with it, but after a while, I began to think it was too dark, and also not as cohesive as I would like. So, I decided to redo it.
First, I painted over the original canvasses with gesso.
Then, I began to glue new fabric pieces in place. I decided to create a low horizon line, running across all four canvasses. First, I added the blue scraps needed for the sky. As in real life, I wanted the sky near the horizon to be lighter than that higher up. Therefore, I used tone-on-tone white as the very lowest sky fabrics, knowing that I would paint them later for the desired effect.
Once the four skies were finished, it was time to audition fabrics for the foreground. Eventually, I decided to paint this area, using Caran D’Ache water soulable wax pastels. (I love these!)
Finally, I painted the white part of the sky, and rubbed on a little white oil pastel to lighten up the rest of the sky. (Detail shot below.)
You can see the entire piece, Horizon Line, on my website.
By the way (BTW,) you might enjoy a video which shows me working on another glued collage. It’s one of the free vidcasts which Bonnie McCaffery offers on her website. (All of these are very interesting and definitely worth viewing.) You’ll find the video featuring my collages here.
Ellen Lindner
P.S. I’m working on a new online class about glued collages, which should be ready in the fall of 2009. If you’d like to get advance notification of the class details, you can add your name to the the notification list using the subscription link at the bottom of my newsletter.
