Painting Paper for Collage

11 x 14 canvas on board: background collage

Making our own acrylic painted papers (see below)

Barb McFarland's collage example

I am not new to painting my own papers in collage work.  Since I took Elizabeth Nelson's workshop in Florida some time ago…I have been playing with that a lot.  I also use Gelli plate mono printing and lots of patterning.  Then I store the papers by color in big bags.  But Barb McFarland does her in a slightly different way. 

She starts with large sheets of white tissue paper and big 30# plastic garbage bags which she lays down on a table.  The tissue paper is Hallmark brand.  But almost any kind will work.  Some folks got theirs at the Dollar Store.  This is just the kind you wrap presents with.  Then she wets it down with water (it just about disappears at this point) and then she gently paints the papers with a hake brush or other soft brush with thinned acrylic (soft or fluid) in several colors blending then.  Unbelievably the paper holds together if you are careful. 

Then we put our paper/pastic in the sunshine to dry for an hour.  After that (see second photo) we just peeled the paper off the plastic.  It's amazing…the side facing the plastic is shiny like the plastic and the front side is a mat finish.  Very sturdy actually.  You can cut or tear this into shapes for collage.  

My mostly green background at the top will be a "bird house" theme.  Barb's at the bottom is a "Raven" theme.  She is drawing on the the background with watercolor pencil.  She also likes to use watercolor crayon.