One of the most creative things an artist can do is to learn a new technique or art form.  Stretching your mind and fingers to do new things gives a different perspective on the talents you already have.  It can also bring a broader dimension to your current art work, and on a personal level, lets you give and take energy with others that are inspired by art. 

This past Friday I had the opportunity to take a wonderful class.  With eight other curious and excited participants, we took the plunge dipping and dying tissue paper.  Yes, it will work with the proper technique and materials, and the results caused oohs and aahhs around the room all morning long.  Here’s where we started the day, with jars of dyes and oil paints, lined up waiting for us.

Into the pans went dyes, oil paints, and a lot of curiosity.

Instructor Susan Rogers-Arreger then spent the next few hours mixing and adding a variety of colors as the rest of us dipped batch after batch of tissue, setting our piles on the side to drip and dry.  A word of caution here, this process is not for the timid, or the impatient.  At the end of the day you wrap all your work in a garbage bag and haul it home.  Then, find somewhere to spread it all out and wait for it all to dry, not knowing what it will all look like in the end.

Lucky for me I have a garage, so there they sat all night.  Being patient is all worth the wait, because the next morning is like Christmas.  Carefully, each paper is opened to reveal the tissue inside, and those are separated and stacked.  Nice and neat, for the moment, my days’ work looks like this -

For the next three days I’ll be learning more techniques from  Susan on what to do with the paper. 

Although I dove in and created my own hand-dyed tissue a few months ago, my technique resulted in simpler paper that doesn’t have the complexity of these new papers.  I’ll be keeping you updated on new works of art with these new papers and combining them with more of my photography and digital paintings.  See tools and books I use to create here.

Tags: Art Techniques, collage, tissue collage, tissue paper