Evolution and The Power of Cutting Tools

This piece...

 

... didn't languish long on the design wall.

I took it down shortly after that photo was taken and began working back into it with layers of glazes in various areas to create more contrast.  I liked the evolution of the piece, but not enough to call it done. 

Stacked Journaling has the tendency, I'm finding, to become very stripe-y, very quickly. I've devised several strategies to combat that, but used none of them in this piece. The stripes began to get on my nerves.

To find my solution, I turned to another one of my favorite design tools.

I cut the piece apart into large chunks, and continued working into each piece with more layers of glazing.

Finally, I began to collage them together.

These three collages, meant to be displayed as a triptych,  measure about 13" x 13" each. The two on the right have already been mounted onto their painted plywood bases and the one on the left will be mounted as soon as hubby has a chance to cut more panels for me. They will hang in this order, as you see them.

Rather than collaging one piece on top of another, which would have been too bulky considering the heavy canvas and multiple layers of acrylics I used, I decided to "inlay" the collage pieces. For example, in the collage on the far right, I cut a shape I liked from the darker canvas and then cut a corresponding shape out of the lighter canvas so that the darker piece would nestle down within it. Then I used heavy gel medium to adhere them both to the plywood. 

The edges all butt seamlessly against one another which enforces the illusion that the collage is one piece of canvas painted in two different color schemes. 

I've not yet decided what substrate on which I want to mount this single, stand-alone collage, but I will use the same "inlay" technique with it, as well.


What I'm really loving about working with cut up pieces of Stacked Journaling is that the text seems to flow from one piece into another. Because it's all written in one hand - mine - and because all of my Journaling and monoprinted Journaling tends to have such similar qualities, different samples can be mixed and matched with each other effortlessly.


Once again, the technique is surprising me by heading off in directions I never imagined!


Happy creating!