As promised, a look at what I have been doing since browsing the second of my Christmas books. I have always admired the work of Mike Bernard and so asked my family to buy me 'Collage, Colour and Texture in Painting'.  Mike is very much a landscape painter, but I felt this was an advantage as I could respond to his ideas without falling into the trap of copying his work. I had hoped to develop some of his methods, but keeping generally to florals and still life.
The book is lovely to look at, the paintings are stunning, and I would love to be better at this collage business.
Not to be daunted, I have given it a go!
The first painting came about through my Art group. The subject was 'Clocks and Watches' Immediate thoughts were dandelion clocks, but I felt that this would not be totally in the spirit of the subject, so something mechanical had to be included! I am still a flower painter so .......how to combine the two! When I had finished the painting, I brought it home and added a number of cogs etc to the corners of the painting where I felt it lacked interest, so I had my first recent ( I say that as I have done some collage in the past) mixed media, including collage, painting and printing.

                                           'Clocks' Mixed Media on Fabriano Extra White
                                             (45cm x 35cm approx)

I then had a go at something a bit more radical! This time it was to be a painting of very free Marguerites and the background would be made up in part of some photos of Marguerites taken in the garden last summer.Then using acrylic ink, gouache and watercolour. I would paint in the flowers. Not as easy as it sounds. It was difficult to decide where to place the picture bits and how many to use, and in some ways was quite difficult to visualise how it was going to end. However, nothing tried, nothing gained, so I pressed ahead and at least managed to finish the painting.
Interesting to note that subsequent efforts have all ended up in the bin.....but I will keep trying from time to time between more traditional stuff which is within my comfort zone!

                                                    'Marguerites..Experiment' Mixed Media
                                                   Fabriano Extra White (35cm x 45cm)

What I need to resolve is the hard edge of the collage pieces. To get a really good reproduction, I have used a photographic mat paper and it is obviously much thicker than tissue or newspaper and therefore does not blend readily with the background support. The result is a series of hard edges which I would like to get rid of so they are less prominent in the finished work and blend more into the background. Any ideas anyone?
Hope you enjoy looking and may be you will be tempted to give it a go!