My top 20 favorite supplies for collage

I decided to expand my list of collage supplies and have come up with my top 20.

If you click on the products below you'll be directed to Amazon.com and other sources for more information on the product. If you decide to buy them, I suggest trying local first, especially if you're in Austin since Jerry's Artarama should have most items. 

1. For a surface, Da Vinci century panels and Ampersand boards or Rives BFK. 
2. Art Boards Gesso (smooth but pricey). My fall back is Jerry's Artist's Gesso. I use a crappy brush to apply gesso since it tends to dry really fast--sometimes quicker than I rinse my brushes.
3. Sandpaper plus a respirator if using (3M respirator cartridges rock.)
4. Golden Fluid Acrylics. I have a palette that I like and pretty much stick to.
5. Pencils, mostly in the B family, and an eraser. I like Staedtler Mars plastic ones. Cretacolor Graphit Aquarell pencils give awesome graphite washes. Metal pencil sharpener a must.
6. x-acto knife with all kinds of blades, especially no. 11
7. Collection of old prints, art papers, interesting receipts or ephemera
8. Scissors! Need to have an itty-bitty and a regular-sized super-sharp pair 
9. Winsor and Newton India ink in black, as well as a quill pen with different nibs. I use Faber-Castell artist pens sometimes too.
10. Watercolor pencils, such as Derwent and Staedtler. I like Caran D'ashe watercolor crayons on occasion too (great for face painting, too!). Brushes, square and round.
11. Derivan liquid pencil in grey 9.
12. As an adhesive, Golden Gel Medium Soft Gel (matte or gloss, depending on preference) plus Liquitex gel medium for lighter papers.
13. Old telephone book for gluing plus cut up credit cards as an applicator
14. Tracing paper in it's utilitarian use or as a transparent layer.
15. Tissue paper. As a texture I like to crinkle it up and glue it down using Liquitex gel medium.
16. Metal ruler for tearing papers or for measuring
17. Blue shop paper towels. Perfect for dabbing a color that's too intense or drying off a brush. These paper towels are pricey but they last.
18. Drafting dust brush. Great for clearing your area of eraser nubs or animal hair before you glue. 
19. Heavy books used as weight with a layer of parchment paper to catch any extraneous adhesive. This keeps the collage from getting all wavy in wetted areas.
20. Computer. I use this a lot for research or to scan an image and reverse it for an image transfer. Sometimes I'll take an old sketch and want it larger for the piece but lack the confidence to draw it freehand without seeing it larger. So I'll tinker with it in Photoshop or Gimp (Photoshop-like and free) and print out a copy that I can cut out and trace points to follow when drawing in the rest of it freehand. 

I had fun with this collage. There's a hidden message shown here.

For ever more it's taped up. I knew I'd fit in a fossil we found on our hike yesterday!











The tags, that looks suspiciously like Christmas tree ornaments, were inspired by a page I found in a magazine about writing down things one is thankful for and having them on display.

Natasha Bowdoin Exhibit and Paper Mache Dude

I'm on to making my paper mache bust, even though I'm still working on past one-piece-a-week projects, namely week 3 and week 5. I was in Houston over the weekend and saw a great exhibit, which I'll mention in a minute, and on the way there and back I listened to Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth on disc. If you haven't picked up this book, it is worth a read/listen (I have both and prefer the CDs). I love listening to it. I'm not sure how to put it, but it seems to remind me to be present, be simple, and just exalt in the happiness of BEing.

The exhibit was of Natasha Bowdoin's work at the CTRL Gallery who also has two large works at the VAC. She is freaking awesome. I hope you enjoy the pictures and consider going to the exhibit which closes February 19. (She can wield an X-acto blade like nobody's business. Yes, what you perceive is a cut out, is indeed a cut out.)

Natasha also had a wall of sketches with a portion shown here. I loved them!

 Back to the cutouts.

 









 

Well, I'm onto my bust of X. Not sure if it's going to be Tesla or husband Keith, but I'm leaning towards Tesla. I'm in the early stages of planning The Tesla Project 2011 so I'm beginning to get nutty again. I love 3-dimensional work. I'm new to it, but since it's so different than what I normally do, it's like giving me a shot of adrenaline. First step for a paper mache project is to ball and twist up newspaper and use masking tape to hold it together. I ran out of tape so I'll need to wait until later today or tomorrow to finish up the head. Right now I'm pretty jazzed.

Week 4

Week 4 of my One-Piece-a-Week goal is finally finished. Week 3, I haven't touched since last report. Week 5, I've started but hope to finish Sunday night or Monday morning. Next week it's paper mache baby! I need a break from wax.

Production Goals

In hindsight, when I came up with my goals for the year, I should have included production goals rather than use the nebulous "Work 20 Hours per Week on Art." Because you see, in that 20 hours I included marketing and so essentially that's what I've been spending most of my time on. It turns out I have a hard time switching from Marketing/PR to making art. A studio schedule would help as well as defined office hours. I have gotten quite a few things accomplished this past month, so maybe I can ease back on the marketing throttle and get back to what really lights me up--making the art.

So, my current production goals? Go into the WPA studio 2x per week starting next week. This week I need to get some plates ready and tie up some loose ends. I will have some good news on Thursday (I hope) and will be posting about it either way. So in the coming weeks, expect to see some new work that I do on the press and not just as a collage in my home studio. I'll be keeping up the one-piece-per-week project. See? I've already applied gesso on my boards since I have a full February and March. I don't want any excuses.

I will still be drinking tea every afternoon around 4. I hope you're taking time out for yourself too. 

Fun pattern for a sweater, Week #s 3 and 4

For the last two summers I've knitted sweaters, and I'm on the hunt for one to begin late July. You see, I have to plan a sweater months in advance and buy the yarn way ahead of my launch date, because if I wait until July, I would laugh at such a suggestion as knitting in the heat. If I have it ready to go at the start of our get-the-heck-out-of-town-or-bust time of year, it's much easier. Especially if it's ready to go in my knitting bag with the proper needles and accouterments. My current idea? This one.

Well, I haven't quite finished week 3 or week 4 of my One-Piece-a-Week project, but at least I'm getting closer. I won't go into excuses, but there you have it. I'm already slipping on my New Year's Resolutions... I'm still hopeful that I'll wrap these up and begin on #5 in the next few days.

I demoed gelatin printmaking at the Windsor Park Library on Saturday and had a blast. I was the recipient of a super cool gift, but I wanted to ask for permission before I post it. Hopefully soon you'll see it!


Oh and listen to this little gem. My business cards have the wrong phone number printed on them. Too bad my new Excel spreadsheet (thank you Alison of Burnish & Brush Art Studio for sharing!) doesn't have a column for Cost of Errors.

Week 2

I've been a little off the last two weeks. I just can't seem to get to the print lab, even though I have several prints to work on. Various things keep getting me derailed. But the good news is I'm still on target with my one-piece-a-week goal! Woo hoo! I worked on this while The Big Lebowski was on in the background--The Dude Abides. Perhaps a fitting choice since I seem to want long baths and hours of bowling over ink and an apron?

This piece is itty bitty. I haven't worked this small in awhile, but it was a fun study nonetheless. The next one, already in the works, is on catchers and their signals.

It's rather difficult to get rid of the glare on encaustic works. The best thing to do is set up a diffuser. It can be done easily with a white sheet. Here's a picture of my studio with the light draped. The pic is from several weeks ago and for this current encaustic piece, I'll have to leave a better picture to another day since it's time for bed. Once I retake the picture, I'll post them up side-by-side to see if it's worth the hassle.

Week 1

This week was somewhat uneventful art-wise. I did manage to complete my first week's assignment of one piece per week, and finish an encaustic piece that I started awhile ago and blogged about once. (Raleigh, age 5, did say something funny. She asked why that face is in everything and I had to laugh. I told her I was getting sick of it too.) I need to put on a protective border/frame still, and will tackle that tomorrow. Info on that here.

This week was a week for doing laundry and unpacking from our TX to FL and back car-trip/exodus, plus putting away decorations--I'm sure you know the drill. Things got more exciting last night--I hosted WPA's annual potluck at our place and had 16 folks stop in for a glass of wine and a bite. It was fun to get the gang together for a few hours of chatting about our lives and our art. Something particularly fun happened. Fellow printmaker (and uke player) Deborah McLouth gave us a harpsichord! We do somewhat envision our family as the VonTrapps of Sound of Music fame (a warbley version, anyway), so it makes a great addition to our house of instruments. Wes is particularly thrilled and played on it all morning. (Thank you Deborah!!)

I stopped in to see the Flatbed exhibit at the Austin Museum of Art this morning and highly recommend it. I own one of the Kelly Fearing prints that's in the exhibit, so that was really cool to see. AMOA had clay busts on display by Billy Ray Mangham of Sleeping Dog Studios and I'm totally inspired to make a papier mache bust. Except mine won't be an everyday person like Billy Ray's. I'm thinking Tesla, of course, but maybe I'll opt for my own personal hero and available model, Keith Savage. Look for it in the weeks to come.

One piece a week

A couple of years ago my friend Theresa Bond and I decided we'd try and finish one piece of artwork a week, based on the one painting a day movement. It was super fun and I really made some great work that 1st quarter (because a year is really long and I pooped at in April). I think it was freeing to go in and work and not be afforded much time to over analyze and overwork. I need some spontaneity in my work right now and I'm going to give it another shot. In effort to make it this an easier task and less daunting, I plan on broadening the scope. Sewing projects are included. Projects that I started at one point and never finished are included. Hopefully I'll make it at least until April.