Wet-Strength Tissue with Stencils and Masks -- More Prints put into Artwork

Although many of my recent posts have detailed the use of wet-strength tissue paper with stencils and masks, more examples still wait in the wings.

The advantage of artist-quality, wet-strength tissue is that when added to a collage, its plain white background disappears, or nearly disappears, leaving a layered look that's much more entertaining for the eye of the viewer.  

Giftwrap tissue has no "wet strength" so it'll try to dissolve if used in the way I'm showing here.  I knew this in advance, yet I experimented with printing on giftwrap-quality black tissue using white acrylic paints.  I'll show those prints in a future post, after I've finished using them in collages.  At this point, all I've done is to test them on scrap paper.  Pre-testing is always a good idea when working with something known to be fragile!  Likewise, with anything that's an unknown!  Pre-testing takes time, but it's time well spent.

Note:  The silver print was made on one side of the tissue.  The white print was made on the flip-side of the tissue.  Rather than using a gel plate to create this print, I used the brayer method described in an earlier post.

Above:  Wet-strength tissue paper printed with 9" x 12" Winter Berries Stencil L678 (using metallic silver acrylic paint) and 9" x 12" mask Prayer Flags L371 (using Golden Titanium White acrylic paint.) In the photo above, the Prayer Flags L371 print appears nearly black -- because I've placed the tissue onto a black background, to clearly show the paper before it's cut or torn into pieces for collage.

The abstract mixed-media collage above is still in progress.

A piece of the tissue printed with Prayer Flags L371 and Winter Berries Stencil L678 is subtly visible on the far right and lower 2/3 of this artwork-in-progress.  (This subtle presence creates an "implied" texture to give depth/interest to the overall artwork.)  Here, the Winter Berries Stencil L678 part of the print is nearly invisible because I had a choice of which way to place the collage paper. Placing it with the printed side down, I achieved a look that featured mostly the Prayer Flags L371 aspect of the print.  Had I chosen to place the tissue printed-side-up, both prints would have been more clearly visible.

Since the above art-in-progress heavily incorporates linework, I've included linework imagery using pieces of other printed tissues, as well as 3 pieces of heavier stencil-printed paper --

(1)  In the upper right:  Part of a purple acrylic paint print made on wet-strength tissue using my 6" x6" mask Chandelier s971 .   

(2)  Directly below that, in the focal area: a partial print made with 6" x 6" s238 Palm Fronds Silhouette Small (purple and yellow acrylic paints on wet-strength tissue.)

(3)  Scattered across the upper left quadrant:  wet-strength tissue pieces printed using 6" x 6" mask Champagne s960.

Pictured below -- a close-up of one piece of tissue gel-plate printed with 6" x 6" mask Champagne s960 using Golden High Flow acrylic paint-- before it was adhered to the collage using matte medium gel.

To scroll through the pages of my stencils and masks at StencilGirl Products.com, please start here.

Thanks for your visit here today!