Colorful Collage Art with a painted Butterfly

Hi everyone!

Today I'm sharing another painting process in my art journal. Most of my journals are themed, for example "face sketching" or "abstract" etc. The square journal shown here is dedicated to collage art with a dreamy, vintage-y look with lots of layers. Once I've completed this journal I will share a flip-through. But for now, let me walk you through the layering process.

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts I love creating my own collage papers for my mixed media artwork. For this spread I have selected a few papers along with some torn bits of sheet music and grid paper. I adhered these with a glue stick and then added a thin layer of Mod Podge on the whole spread to seal and prepare it for the next layers. 

In the above photo I have stencilled on leaf motifs in random areas. The paint needs to dry before adding the next layer.

I gave the whole spread a wash of thinned down acrylic ink in burnt sienna. This gives the artwork a warm glow. Because it is thinned down with a lot of water, the layers are still visible. Once the ink has dried I went in with another stencil in a creamy yellow to add even more texture. I let this dry again. Then I stamped a tiny dot motif using a black stamp pad.

I contemplated adding another stamp, then decided against it, as I thought it would overwhelm the page. I did go in with a paint pen in raspberry pink to make tiny dashes.

Ages ago I painted this butterfly. It's been sitting in my collage fodder basket waiting for the perfect background. Well, the butterfly finally got its rightful place on this page! I added a little sentiment from my sticker book to the other side. I'm really happy with how it turned out.

Thank you for stopping by and have a beautiful day!