I've been expanding my experiments with mixed media and collage. This piece titled "Tides" includes photographs of shore birds that I took on one of my recent beach walks, as well as text of several lines from one of my poems.
Here's the final painting:
"Tides" 8" x 10" Mixed Media/Collage with poetry on canvas © 2012 Barbara Blair
"The ocean tides both high and low
Endlessly in and out they go
Moving waters up and down
On the beaches near my town."
Poetry © 2010 Barbara Blair.
Excerpted from my book titled "Ocean Songs For The Young At Heart."
The painting also includes a shell stencil that I cut, giving a raised effect using molding paste, and I've added a rough stucco texture to indicate sand in some areas. I really like the dimensional effects of these mediums.
To give you an idea of my process, here's a photo of my preliminary composition before glueing anything down, and before I began to add paint to the canvas. The non-photographic elements are cropped designs from some of my other paintings:
I moved the elements around a bit to get a more pleasing composition, and also decided to replace the "wave" design on the left of center with another photo of the curlews on the beach. Here's the first revision of the composition after I painted the canvas and glued down the basic elements:
I then decided to eliminate the small shell border on the left, and instead make a larger version of the design as a raised stencil. It needed to be balanced by adding more of the design at the bottom right, thus eliminating the photo of the crab which was not very visible at this point. I then added the phases of the moon, which helped to tell the story of the tides, plus sand texture and more paint.
And here again is the final painting:
This was a very enjoyable exercise in which I learned more about the various mediums available, as well as design composition. I found I had to set the painting aside a couple of times though, before deciding the best way to proceed further.
I really like the versatility and possibilities of mixed media and collage, and plan to do more of it.
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