Print & Paint Course is Open for Registration!
Before Pinterest was a thing, I was a magazine collector. I would tear out images of things that inspired me or things I wanted to someday create and eventually, I had enough torn out pages that I needed my own space in the filing cabinet for them all. I’ve since purged most of those images but a few remain in a hanging file folder, available for me to thumb through whenever I want a little analog day dreaming time.
My magazine collecting has scaled back quite a bit and now I tear pages out of the few magazines I still collect for a different reason - to use in my art. Of course, I love using my own imagery in my art as well but sometimes other people capture color and texture and themes in ways that I can’t.
To be clear, I don’t use other people‘s images all the time and when I do I add my own color and texture and recontextualizing enough that the images aren’t even close to recognizable when compared to the original. (Copyright is king.)
My favorite aspect of using magazine images is completely changing the context and experiencing the surprise on someone’s face when they learn that most of my work includes found magazine images. It’s not obvious - just like I like it. I might find an image of a pretty patterned rug but by the time I’m done with it it’s a moving line of visual puncuation on on a bowl of abstract florals or it’s a bite of color on the edge of my canvas. My goal when working with magazine images is to not try to preserve the original image but rather to rework it to be something totally different than what it was before, completely beyond recognition from the original picture.
Some folks have pretty strong opinions about whether or not to use magazine imagery. Of course there’s the ethical and copyright aspects that should be respected which should go without saying but the argument of whether or not it’s “real” art or not is uninteresting to me.
We, as creatives, are in the expression business. We are dancing in the realm of possibilities and I don’t want to categorically restrict elements that could be the very elements that unlock joy in my creative expression.
I did that for a while. I listened to a few other artists’ opinions about the unworthiness of found modern imagery in art and I learned that a big part of the joy I get in creating is in taking what is around me and reworking it to tell a totally different story. I think that’s true for a lot of artists and thank goodness there are so many amazing creatives who make glorious art from unassuming elements as a result.
I’m so enamored with the freedom that using magazine images has offered me in my art that I created a wonderful little mini course focusing just on this topic. In the course, Print & Paint, I take you through the process I use for choosing images to incorporate into my art, how to modify images for a totally unique presentation, and how to layer them with other media for luminous, mysterious color stories - especially when integrated with totally original elements you may have created from scratch.
If you want to start using magazine pages right away, I have a couple of tips that might make it more fun and easy to work with colors and patterns you find:
1. LOOK FOR PATTERN AND COLOR
Rather than focusing on full images like faces, defined objects as a whole, or styled scenes, look for portions of visual texture that can be used in part. I look for images like striped rugs, flowers, and patterns on textiles. When you look for patterns, color, or texture, you’ll see things differently. I’m not particularly fond of photographs of fish but I recently came across one that had a really lovely dotted pattern on it. I used a portion of that dotted pattern in a painting and it didn’t have a speck of fishiness to it when I was done.
2. PRIME YOUR PAGES
Some magazine pages get really soft and wrinkled when you add wet glue to them, especially thin magazine pages. I find that if I coat both sides of the page with Liquitex clear gesso, it makes the page much easier to work with when it’s time to collage it down. I will often build up a pile of pages and spend and hour or two gessoing them all at once (good music on, of course) so that they are ready to use when I want to use them. You could use matte medium or another brand of gesso but I love the tooth and super flatness of the Liquitex brand best.
3. BE MINDFUL OF EDGES
When I’m incorporating magazine imagery in my art, I expect the edges of the paper to add visual texture to the piece. I like that. I don’t, however, love a really strong cut edge or a really busy torn edge. I like something in between - a torn edge using a straight edge. I’ll Lay a metal ruler on the magazine page where I want to “cut” it down, and I’ll tear the page against the ruler. That way I get a mostly straight line but with a softened edge that blends even more smoothly into the surface I am painting on (especially if I glue the piece down using a plastic spreader instead of a brush.)
4. DON’T BE AFRAID TO COVER IT UP
I frequently use images that I end up mostly covering with paint. An image of a full autumnal flower arrangement might end up being a half a dozen small, scrumbly dots of rusty red where chrysanthemums were. A black and white striped rug might end up only peeping through as a little segment of stripes on an abstract landscape.
5. PLAY WITH PROPORTION
I have a lot of fun putting things together that are the “wrong” size compared to the real life version. A small image of a building might have an image of a giant dahlia perched on its roof or a herd of horses might end up with very long legs scratched into the paint layers underneath them. There’s something about intentionally deconstructing proportion that gives me more freedom to experiment with fun combinations of images and color.
As much I love deep diving into complex techniques and materials, I really value the accessibility of simple materials like magazine pages and allowing myself to layer years of ideas and experience over the top of them to create something really interesting, unique, and maybe even more importantly, fun to create!
If you would like to explore ways that you can elevate and beautifully transform magazine images in your art work, I invite you to register for Print & Paint and join in on the fun. Early registration of $18 is open through Friday, July 29th at midnight MST. The class goes live Friday morning and you’l have instant + lifetime access to the entire course right away! I would love to see what beautiful and intriguing art you create using the processes and techniques I share with you in the course!
Click here to learn more about the course or watch the trailer below! I hope to see you there!