Painting Over Collage

This painting over a collage technique is something I learnt following a tutorial by Willowing art online.  It’s a nice way to get the portions right and to learn how to draw different faces.  There are so many layers upon layers on this canvas and some layers of white gesso in-between the color almost seem to mask the colors underneath, but once it all comes together its a cohesive piece with loads of texture and depth.

The first step is to glue down a face that you like as well as other random interestingly textured or shaped elements around the page, and then to go ahead and use acrylic paints to paint over the face.  As you can see I changed her hair quite a bit.  Don’t forget to add highlights as well as outlines to define the features.

I then added a few different colors using watercolor crayons around the canvas.  The next step is to paint a very thin layer over everything but the girl with some white gesso.  The gesso gives the surface some tooth or texture for other mediums to easily be added overtop, otherwise painting over the glossy magazine paper can be difficult with some mediums.   Once the gesso is dry you can draw in the other elements that will be going onto the canvas.  I added bunting, wings and a crown, as well as some flowers and buildings.  

I then used some white paint to color in the elements before adding more of the same colors that were used in the background and adding them around the drawn elements on the page.  

For the finishing touches, I’ve added some shadows to the white elements and re-outlined the drawings with a darker colored pencil as well as adding some more white textures and random designs with my white gel pen.  The process here was really fun and I’ll definitely be taking some techniques learnt here and applying them n other canvases and pages to come.

​​© Ammara Cokar 2018