I've been playing around with some mixed media lately and making altered pages for fun. (taking a short break from my larger paintings.) I thought I'd share with you how I made this altered mixed media page.
First I assembled a bunch of pages torn from various magazines. As I'm a big fan of Andy Warhol I ended up using the cover of Artnews magazine and altered it. As this is a magazine cover and due to copyright laws, this page is for my personal use only.
I begin by distressing the page in areas with a sanding block. This takes away some of the sheen in areas and gives it a nice rough finish ready to take the acrylic paint and medium.
I applied random areas of color keeping them bright and clean. After all I want to capture the essence of Warhol in the altered page.
I cut out poppy shapes from some background papers that I created earlier and glued them down with matte medium. Then I gave the whole page a coat of the same medium. When the page had dried I added some free form lines with a black Sharpie marker.
I finished the page by adding some texture with stamping. I used a piece of rubber shelf liner. I also used my sanding block again and sanded off paint in a few places. Finally, I added a few "seeds" in the bottom poppy with my black marker. I then coated the whole page with a coat of my acrylic matte medium.
Taking a break from whatever it is that you do is a great way to relieve stress (remember cutting and pasting and painting in grade school?) Even those that claim they can't even draw a straight line or stick figures can enjoy the freedom of this type of creative outlet.
