52 Weeks of Collage Part 2 Week 7

Totally forgot to post last night... My collage for week 7 is done on a wood panel. I used vintage Japanese paper as a base and layered on a letterpressed fan of my own design, hand made washi papers and an image of a geisha from an old postcard. I scanned and re-printed the geisha image onto rice paper so the calligraphy layer shows through for a nice background pattern.

Collage week 7

New Collages

I've been in a collaging mood so here are two new Japanese inspired collages.

The first one is made from a vintage photo of a Geisha layered on a page from a vintage Japanese book, combined with handmade paper and an engraving of a moth.

Geisha and Moth

The second one is also layered on a page from a vintage Japanese book. In addition, I used  hand made papers, some old labels, and a tea pot letterpressed from my own illustration.

Japanese Tea

Geisha 2

I made another attempt at using the transfer paper. I used the same photo and here is the result. The image cracked a bit when I transferred it - I think I tried to remove the backing paper too soon. It does give it an aged appearance though. Before transferring, I tore the top edge of the photo and do like how it came out. This collage was done on an old Reader's Digest book cover. Some Japanese type, washi paper and gold star tissue complete the collage.

Collage week 40

Autumn Geisha

I went to the art store yesterday and spent lots of money on a ton of new handmade papers. I also purchased some transfer paper and did some experimenting. It definitely is a learning curve and I ruined a few images but in the end, my collage for this week came out pretty well. I used the transfer paper with a vintage Japanese photo and transferred it onto a Reader's Digest book cover. I also transferred the Japanese calligraphy but I put that on one of my new papers. The fan is a rubber stamp and I added a few more Japanese papers. Because I was experimenting, the nice pattern on the book cover got covered up but, win a few lose a few.

Collage week 39

The transfer paper I used is "Lesley Riley's TAP Transfer Paper". I like it because it doesn't leave a white background and you can use it with any inkjet printer. It tends to slide a bit while you're ironing so you have to be really careful.