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DRAWING AND PAINTING IMAGINARY ANIMALS

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PROJ EC T

Doggone It!
Messy Collage

CollAge And drAWing

I love the look of paper collage incorporated into drawings and paintings but find I avoid pulling out gel medium or even a glue stick. (I guess we just dont get along.) However, I recently took a class from Oregon artist Karen OBrien and, after seeing some of her richly layered journal pages was inspired to get over myself and give it a try. This project consists of creating a series of dogs (or animal of your choice) by gluing down random pieces of collage papers, covering them with Golden Absorbent Ground, and finishing with a mechanical pencil. This project is easy and quick (and the messy part only lasts a few minutes).

i dont like to get my hands messy and will rarely pull out the glue. But there are always exceptions, and this series of dogs was one of them!

materials
610 pieces of hot-press watercolor paper, about 4" x 5" (10.2 x 12.7 cm) gel medium application brush Golden Absorbent Ground mechanical pencil kneaded rubber eraser stump

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1 Find some collage ephemera you like and tear them into smallish pieces (about 1 12 inches [3.8 cm]). Here I used a page from an old book and some security envelopes. On each page, glue down onto three or four pieces with gel medium. (Though this step is random, in the back of your mind you should be aware that you eventually want to make an animal, meaning you can generally place a body and a snout, knowing that the parts might change down the line.) 2 Cover your entire paper with a coating of absorbent ground. This will do two things: the creamy white substance tones down the colors of the collage papers, allowing you a more neutral surface on which to work, and it unifies surface textures of the different papers, so your pencil reacts the same no matter which part of the paper you are drawing on. 3 Once everything is completely dry, add eyes, hair, paws, tails, fur, or other detailing to pull out your dog with your mechanical pencil. Use your stump to get into some of the nooks and crannies. Erase as needed.

tip

Be aware that its a little more difficult to erase pencil lines completely when working on the absorbent ground, so you might want to work lightly at first.

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DRAWING AND PAINTING IMAGINARY ANIMALS

here the collaged configuration, left, is shown in all four directions to show that once you get the hang of finding creatures in shapes, you can almost always make it work!

8: DOGGONE IT!

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