Windows to Spring - a mixed media collage and painting tutorial

Windows to Spring
Cyndi Lavin, 2017

Sometimes pieces don't go the way you plan!  In this case, I was hoping to be able to paint a randomly designed background and to come up with something that I could further refine by blacking out certain sections.  But it was not to be.  Instead of continuing down that path until I had ruined the entire thing, I decided on plan b...cut it up!

The background is heavy watercolor paper that was rolled with Cobalt teal acrylic paint.  I added tar gel swirls over top of that and waited for it to dry completely.  Then I covered it with diluted white gesso and scraped that back off so that the lines and some parts of the background were revealed again.

I used Hansa yellow light, Pyrrole orange, Quinacridone magenta, and Permanent green light to augment the Cobalt teal background.  Eventually, after failing to come up with an overall design that I liked (several days worth of fooling around with it), I cut it into squares and rectangles.  Several more hours were spent figuring out how to put them together!  The new background is another piece of watercolor paper, rolled with Carbon black and Phthalo turquoise acrylics.

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Copyright 2017 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. Not to be reprinted, resold, or redistributed for profit. The tutorial may be printed out for personal use or distributed electronically provided that entire file, including this notice, remains intact.