Paper Picture - Winter Stems

Here is my latest and most complicated collage yet:

It is based on a jug of stems and seed heads cut from my garden, including Witch Hazel, Winter Jasmine, Vibernum, Ivy and seeds heads of Nigella and Japanese Anemone. 

I started this one by creating a pencil drawing to simplify the image. This proved invaluable later when some of the blossoms had faded in the warmth of the house.

Then I painted up sections of lining paper with acrylics in the colours and textures I thought I would need. The paper for the jug was a particular challenge. I painted an off white background and then used a 'comb' cut from old cereal box dipped in black to drag the lines down it. I had kept my scraps from previous collages too so could use some of these. This project really highlighted to me the usefulness of the sections of paper containing the accidental boundaries between the different colours so I was glad that I had lots of these although I wasn't conscious of this when I was doing the painting stage. 

Again I chose a black background, ordinary A4 card, particularly to show off the Witch Hazel flowers. I started with the jug and the stems, arranging them on the background before sticking them down with PVA. Then it was a matter of working my way through the different stems,  starting with the ones at the back and gradually working forwards. 

Some of the leaves are double layered to give an impression of depth, with a lighter colour behind. The same applies to the Nigella seed heads where I cut out the holes and then stuck a dark brown layer behind. 

Another challenge was because I was working in A4 size,  some of the flowers and buds are tiny - fiddly to cut, hold and glue down neatly. It would probably drive most people mad but I could see the result was worth it so I persevered! Decent tweezers were essential. 

Finally I tweaked some of the areas with some Inktense pencils e.g. where the area was too light or not defined enough. I am really pleased with the overall piece.  I was worried that it was too 'painterly' but I think the fairly stylised flowers have just about pulled it back.

Paper Pictures - Camellias

I have a wonderful red camellia in the garden and they are so striking when in full bloom so that inspired my next paper picture.

I was still very much inspired by Clover Robin's version in her book 'Cut Paper Pictures':

I began by painting lining paper with various colours and textures to suit the flowers, stems, leaves and buds. I am just using cheap acrylic paints and tried to mix up colours and leave unpainted parts to give a variety of textures as I have learned that this technique is all about happy accidents. Here are the papers I ended up with.

The final piece is below. I deliberately tried to be more 'graphic' in my approach compared with the snowdrops in my last blog post. I think I achieved this but some parts of the picture are more successful than others. The leaves, for example, are possibly still too 'painterly'. I ended up adding the veins on them with Inktense pencils, rather than cutting out paper, so that may have added to this feeling. This piece is A4 laid on ordinary white card.