Embroidered Collage

Last night, our final week of class, was a great deal of fun.  Our teacher was Stacie Speer Scott and she had the most amazing amount of energy.  Her critiques and suggestions were very helpful.  I tried a couple techniques I enjoyed but will likely never use again and discovered a simple tool I absolutely must acquire.  A couple pieces I transformed and a couple pieces I barely touched.

Stacie started out the evening with demos.  She began with construct and deconstruct, cutting up old pieces and turning multiple pieces into one piece.  I was tickled that one of her options involved an awl and book-binding thread to sew pieces together.  Her glue of choice for collage is PVA, using matte medium on top to seal pieces so that future layers aren't absorbed by the paper.  I haven't tried that one, though I have a bottle, and will have to in the near future.

Then she began on overall techniques.  She seems to be very into sanding and layering paint and sanding and layering paint.  It was very effective in her example piece.  Stacie had also brought two "smelly" options, tar and beeswax.  Apparently asphaltum from printmaking makes a good aging coat, wiped off in varying degrees with mineral spirits.  She liked the tar variety better than liquid acrylics or some such (though she uses those too) because she felt the color was richer.  It was neat to see the beeswax demonstrated, as I've seen some amazing works online and a couple atcs in person.   These had to be almost the last technique used, since acrylics and such can't go on top of them.

  The first piece I went after was the one that used to be the leg.  I thought that the mix of papers might work well with a beeswax coating, with some oil pastels for emphasis, as the wax and oil media were compatible.  So I started scribbling, emphasizing some swirls and circles that had shown up.  I began coating the surface with wax, and it was a little thicker than I expected.  She saw me partway in and gasped a bit because she'd meant to take the set-up outside and heat everything hotter, and so had been letting it cool, which was why it was too thick.  We found some razor blades and scraped large portions off.  I added more color, added thinner layers of wax, then added just a few extra touches of color.  I can see why people get addicted to this technique.

  Perhaps swirls would be a good new title.  Or universal.  Just as long as it's something other than the piece, or pieces, that "used to be the leg".  I'm also having cropping issues.  I don't like it as shown in the previous paragraph.  Here's a couple more options.  I can get one piece, as shown on the left.  Or maybe two smaller pieces, as seen above?  Either way, cutting is the only thing left that will happen.  I'm otherwise happy with it.

  Next I wanted to try the nifty plastic squeegee scraper thing Stacie had been using for the application of paint.  I LOVE this tool.  I tore the yarn off the lace piece, decided some red would be a nice contrast and started scraping.  The paint makes such a different mark this way than when applied with a brush.  I'd tried credit cards, but this had more flexibility and I liked the effect better.  Later in the evening, when the red was mostly dry, I put on white.  My original work is essentially gone, but it's existence peeks out and adds texture to what I've done on top of it.  It wasn't wasted, which is something I sometimes worry about when covering things up.  I'm really happy with what is happening here but feel it stills needs something.

  I painted the shoes in a moment of pause, thinking about what to do next.  I mixed the colors and glazing medium, painted it on, then wiped it down so that the sequin waste would show through.  As I did that I placed an accidental wipe of gold near the bottom.  I couldn't wipe it out when I caught it, so I shrugged, and began using paint remnants on my palette in other places on the background.  I absolutely love the effect!  It seems to bring the piece together more.  I also rubbed in some cerulean blue liquid acrylic (Golden) that Stacie had brought.  That is such a wonderful blue.  I'll be buying some of that at the next Dick Blick order for certain.  I'm almost done with this piece.  I'm debating adding beaded ornaments to the shoes.

  I wanted to try the asphaltum, so nominated the pots piece.  Since I mostly liked it as is I figured it could take a top coat.  The material was interesting to work with, but I'm not thrilled with the result on this piece and when I took it home it still stunk.

  I consulted with Stacie about the plant piece.  She asked me what I liked about it, and I told her the swoosh and the background.  She suggested turning the brown branches into a green.  We held up a bunch of paper scraps and decided on an olive green, maybe with some silver in it.  I thought that worked very well, except it was the only part that glittered, despite the silver bits in the paper on the pot, so I added more silver accents to the pot.  I think I want to go over this one with colored pencils at this point and work a little more depth into the background but in a way that doesn't obscure what is already there.  I'm also seriously considering poking holes and adding some stitch to the leafy bits.

I've got a couple weeks to play with these, as I can display three in a show that the store/gallery is having of works done or started in their classes and life drawing sessions.  An opportunity for a sale sounds good to me.  The Greater Norristown Art League is also having their annual juried show mid-May and I'm thinking of submitting Casbah Sonata and the best of these mixed media pieces.  I have some framing to do.

What did I take away from the class overall?  Proof that overlaying and changing a piece completely could be effective.  My head knew, but my heart didn't.  Realization that the fear of messing up what I've done exists within me, which I'd not really noticed before but explains a couple things.  A few ideas about how I could start from a representational beginning, which I'd never tried before.  Some experience in critiquing my work with others' eyes.  And assorted other little things.  It was definitely worth the money to me and I hope to take more classes in the future.