Painted Paper Apple Collage
How about an artful apple collage to celebrate fall, or maybe you need some fun kitchen art? Apple collages could also make great cards for Rosh HaShana, the Jewish New Year, or even fun place cards or gift tags. Keep it simple, and the results will be great! When collage is made using painted paper, and the collage pieces are well adhered, it almost looks like a painting, which is so amazing!
Collage using painted paper, and specifically painted tissue paper was made famous by the children’s book author Eric Carle, who unfortunately passed away recently. I made this painted paper apple collage based on a class taught by the amazing Este Macleod, called Colour Collage 1 (which is not currently available), though you can certainly visit the hashtag #colourcollage1 on instagram to see all the student work.
I can not explain the process based on how Este taught it, but I can explain the process based on Eric Carle’s technique, which is similar. Eric Carle, used painted tissue paper collage exclusively to illustrate his world renowned children’s books and in fact kept huge flat files full of painted tissue paper sorted according to color! Okay dear readers, as you can likely imagine given the wide variety of projects on this blog, I could never limit myself to one technique, so I always find it quite interesting that artists are able to do the same thing for years on end! Lesson learned? Keep doing the same thing over and over to be successful at it? Hmmm, I do plan to try this same technique with some pomegranites, so that is a start? Okay, let’s get to work!
You’ll Need:
- acrylic paint or acrylic ink, high flow varieties or paint thinned with a medium of some kind so that it is as thin as possible is preferable. You want the look of texture but not the texture!
- white tissue paper or deli paper, preferably Logan brand that is quite a bit thinner than other brands and thus acts more like tissue paper
- glue of some kind, either Modpodge, diluted white glue, or matte medium
- thick cardstock, multimedia paper, or watercolor paper, though this can also be done on white cardboard, like pantyhose inserts!
- a wide paint brush for spreading the glue, and a small paint brush for applying glue to small spots and small pieces of paper
- a piece of parchment or tracing paper
- scissors
- a craft knife (optional) and cutting board
- a large piece of watercolor or mixed media paper as the base for your collage
How To:
The idea of painting or applying pattern to deli paper is very very popular among art journal enthusiasts and mixed media artists. Deli paper is widely used for making gelli prints, as then the prints can be used for collage that isn’t overly thick for working in a journal, for example. How you apply paint or pattern to either tissue paper or deli paper is highly individual, so just have fun combining color and pattern!
Take a look at the how to for painting tissue paper and making a collage by Eric Carle, on his website here, just scroll down beneath the family photos for two great step-by-step tutorials.
You can also see the step by step of a collage cat, done in Eric Carle style here.
- Draw a grid of apples in your desired size, in various poses on a piece of tracing paper (or parchment paper, much cheaper in my neck of the woods)
- Choose pieces of painted paper that you think will work.
- Working on each apple individually, place the tracing paper over the piece of painted paper and move it around until the pattern fits within the apple outline in a desirable way.
- Cut through both layers with a craft knife, or hold the two pieces of paper together and cut out with a scissors. Continue in this way for all the apples.
- Adhere the apples to your piece of paper with a generous coat of glue.
- Add stems, leaves and more pieces of painted paper to suggest shading or depth if desired.
- Make sure all the pieces are bubble free, and if you like, paint a final coat of glue over the whole piece for longevity!
I hope you’ve enjoyed this introduction to collage with painted paper, now go create your own!
