Cut It Out: Grunge Collage

 

This will take two pages, one after the other.  The bottom page is full of color and shapes and blacks along with bright flower colors.  Let dry.

 

Instead of using all gears, I have some little wooden hearts.  I used them in the center of the ‘flowers’.

I painted the wooden hearts and while they dried, I traced the size of the hole I want in the first page.  This will be a peak into my garden.

 

Hint:  In order to have my gate fit, after I trace, I need to cut INSIDE the line so the gate will have tacking space.  After cutting, if you have raggedy edges, trim with scissors. 

I, then, paint a sheet of mixed media paper a Brick color.

HINT:  To get a truer brick color, this is what I did:

Mix a bright orange and a bright red together on your palette.  Grey it down with a color that you get mixing primary blue with a bit of magenta.  That gives you a violet blue.  Then you can mix it with your red/orange daub of red to get a true brick red.  Do it bit by bit until you get the color that you want for bricks.  You can add some white to lighten if you chose, but this is how you get a true brick red. 

 

In mixing, I had to add some brilliant red to get the right color…  it did not have amounts to use and I got a brown but not a red brown so I kept adding brilliant red until I was closer.  I had lots left over.

 

HINT:  to save small amounts of acrylic color you have mixed, put in plastic tube, wrap in damp paper towel, seal in a baggie.  Label everything. 

It will keep your acrylic for a long time this way.  

NOTE:  I have had some go bad and smell like sewer... so maybe you should use distilled water?

 

So now I had Brick Red Acrylic.  Now, how to turn a sheet of painted watercolor paper into bricks? 

This was a major pain to do and took me a couple of hours… but… nailed it…lol… kinda.  I painted the walls and threshold under where the metal gate was going in order to smoothen things out. 

 

 

I glued the metal gate down and decorated the walls with flowers and butterflies that I ‘grunged’ up.  

 

I realized that this old book and its fragile pages would not be able to hold the weight of all those bricks…literally.  I made the decision to add the garden right in the cut-out and glue the two pages together.  It worked.  I do like it and am amazed at how time flies when you are having fun.  I spent over two hours on this one page.

Can you do a cut-out in your art journal.  Mine is grunge.  Will you do it grunge or steampunk?

©Carol Desjarlais 5.18.21