Acrylic Gel Transfers

Earlier this month I had the pleasure of being a visiting artist for two days at the Long Trail School, a local private middle school and high school. The art teacher there, Anharad Edson, has taken a couple of my workshops, and I just love her to pieces! She is so great with the kids and super creative in coming up with projects for them. I admire art teachers who can make a meaningful lesson happen in a 38-minute period, and I've worked with a bunch of them in my area. How they do it is a mystery! We decided to teach the kids my basic collage technique, and then show them how to do an acrylic gel transfer (which is demonstrated in Collage Journeys). Since the acrylic gel has to dry overnight before the transfer can be completed, Anharad had the kids finish their projects in subsequent sessions. But they all made really good collage backgrounds, and they all got the wow factor of gel transfers. I'm posting a few pieces that I did as demonstrations. If you haven't done gel transfers and want to know how, go to pages 81 and 89 of Collage Journeys for two different approaches, or Google it! For these collage studies/demos, I used photos of myself printed out on an ink jet printer. The backgrounds are collage and paint. Fun fun fun!

More Collage Journeys Photos

I promised to post more photos from our Collage Journeys Workshop here in my Rupert, Vermont studio. Fortunately, one of the students, Gretchen, took fantastic photos and sent them to me on disk. The first one is the opening page of the journal Gretchen made after the workshop.

New Collage Paintings

Here are a few pieces I have been working on post-Rupert Workshop. There are about half a dozen more in progress, and I work on them all at the same time, which is probably evident from the similar color scheme and compositional elements. My process begins with a painted or collage "start" - random painting, collaging, building up pattern and texture. Then I proceed to add layers of paint and collage, obscuring much of what came before, but adding new elements. Often a piece will change course dramatically several times over in the course of its journey towards completion. Completing a piece in any one work session is never the object. I find that if I keep focused on the process, pieces have a way of resolving themselves, or not, in their own time.

Art Unraveled proposals for workshops are due next week, and I'm proposing a workshop that focuses on this process of layering paint and collage. Of course, I'll include other tried-and-true workshops in my proposal as well. I'll keep you posted on that.

I think I'll try another color scheme for the next group. I love this quinacridone gold and turquuoise thing, but I should probably challenge myself in the color department. Any suggestions? I love your comments!!