Sunset Collage

Where are you missing being able to go? I’ve been missing being able to go to the ocean, so this blog is about how I took myself there creatively. So I pictured a sunset over the ocean and made with a collage of monoprinted strips.

Monoprinting

All you need is a smooth flat surface: glass, laminated sheet, polythene pocket. You can use your tabletop but it can get messy!

You can watch this process in a short 14 minute film:

https://youtu.be/pOVYCeme9q4

I used eco acrylic paint: yellow ochre, vermillion, and also metallic acrylic paint: orange, red, pink.

Spread some paint out on your surface. A brayer roller helps to spread the paint into a thin layer, but you can improvise with an old store card.

You can make marks in the paint, and can use the end of a paintbrush, or how about you look around at home to see what you have to produce a pattern. I tried a fork, a bottle top, and a whisk.

Lay a sheet of paper over the painted surface, press down, and then pull off. You can repeat without adding any more paint and get a “second generation” print off.

I love this organic printing process, as you can relax and enjoy seeing what you get! You can quickly get lots of pages to use in projects.

I already had some pages I had printed in sea colours (viridian, turquoise, metallic aquamarine …). I also had some painted newspaper and some glittery wallpaper sample. Torn tissue paper is also great for this too.

Repeat the printing process above to create pages for the ocean.

Collage

One the paint has dried, tear the printed pages into strips. Irregular works best.

I like to loosely audition the strips to get the arrangement I want.

Take a piece of cardboard and apply glue to the top half. A sponge brush is great for this. Then lay the torn, painted strips down on the glue, pressing and smoothing with the foam bush. So some glue will end up on the top surface, but it will dry clear and help to seal the collage. It is also nice to have some slightly curling edges, as this adds depth to the scene.

You can then fill in any gaps you don’t like with other small pieces of the printing or some tissue paper.

Apply glue as you work downwards, completing the ocean. Leave the collage flat to dry.

Surreal images with Image Transfer and Brushos

Welcome to February! I've been seeing loads of 2020 projects and inspirations online and got inspired to host my own. My project is going to be a crazy quilt/art quilt mash up. It's called Tamarama 2020 Sew-along. The concept is to make 20 blocks each with 20 techniques/materials before the year end. My plan is to be pushing a lot of Colourcraft products to the limit to enhance my blocks.

My first challenge is the focus of each block.

I want to have surrealistic images and I'm using a couple of methods to achieve them. With the fish images, I first made collages using copyright free images, then I copied them using a laser printer to get them ready for the transfer process.

Above is one of my printed collages. I then coated the image with Image Transfer Medium, applied it face down onto my fabric and let it dry thoroughly.

The next step is to spray the back of the paper with water and gently remove the layers until the image remains.

I then carefully painted the fish with fabric medium and let that dry. Next step was to add Brushos and spray with water.

I quite liked this, but I wanted to add more color and make the image pop more- so I painted in more details with Metallic Drawing Inks. 

Perfect!

The second kind of transfers I did are using a couple of surrealist techniques. The first is how I select what to transfer and it's all about randomness- I made a template, traced it onto a magazine cover and cut out that shape from all the pages. I then go through those images that I cut out and pick the ones I like the best to transfer.

After I transferred these images I added more randomness by adding some Brusho colors and spraying them.

This image is pretty cool as it is- but last year I did some experimenting with another Surrealist technique where I rotate this image around and see what else I can see-I then enhance that with paint pens and other paints and drawing tools.

My woman gained a flamingo friend! 

I did the same thing with another image:

And I had done two collages as well:

It's a lot of fun to challenge your creative vision in these ways. 

My next plan is to sew fabrics around these images in "crazy quilt" style, while adding some more art quilt techniques along the way.

If you are interested in joining in on the Tamarama 2020 Sew Along just click on the link or enter this address into your browser, https://www.facebook.com/groups/tamarama2020sal/ or follow me @tamaramaquilting on Instagram or check out the #tamarama2020sal hashtag. 

My art quilt inspirations and techniques will be posted on this blog, but other info will be mostly in Facebook.

See you in a couple of weeks!

Brusho 24 Colour Boxed Set

Foam brush

Aztec Fabric Medium