Our last CREATE Mixed-media Retreat of the year just wrapped in Chicago, and I’m not sure the dust has settled yet. By dust, I’m talking figuratively about the excitement of so many artists coming together and learning new techniques and also the literal dust created in Sue Pelletier’s classes where she and her students work with Paperclay® and Pariscraft to create highly textural collage art.
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| Sue Pelletier builds up textures on collage and mixed-media art here with layers of ephemera, stitched pieces of crinoline, mediums, paint, and found objects. |
Sue first came to our attention at Cloth Paper Scissors when she submitted painted artwork that incorporated lots of whimsical found objects. Over the years she’s kept the found objects, but also built up the texture under the paint. The resulting collaged artwork jumps off the canvas with expressive joy.
Sue is absolutely fearless about working with unusual materials and seeing where they will lead. One of my favorite of her techniques is drawing into wet paint, gesso, or heavy mediums with pencils and other objects.
You can find a lot of useful tools for making texture around the house:
Plastic fork. Make lines and cross-hatching.
Comb. Makes finer, closer lines and swirls.
Pencil eraser. Perfect for making random dots.
Chopstick or end of a paintbrush. Draw circles, squiggles, and other shapes.
Chunky stamps. Stamp down and then life straight up to put decorative impressions in thick mediums.
There are also some exciting new tools on the market for this purpose, like the CatalystTM silicone wedges. I like them because you can use them with paint, gesso, mediums, encaustic, and more, and they clean up easy-breezy.
Sue shows you how to create mixed-media texture in her video tutorial, Textures for Collage: Build em Up!
But for a limited time, you can get her video plus painting advice from two other artists, and fiber paste and Catalyst wedges all together as part of our Mixed-Media Painting and Texture Kit. Get the kit and start playing with texture today!
P.S. What’s your favorite way of adding texture to mixed-media collages? Leave a comment below.