The Fine Art of Travel

Mixed Media-24 x 30

Recently a student who had seen one of my larger mixed media  paintings asked if we could create a similar type of painting (i.e. mixed media collage) to pay homage to her trip to Italy this year. I thought this was a fantastic idea.

I've always loved bold graphic vintage travel posters (here are some examples from a poster website) so I thought we could combine the two looks onto a gallery wrap canvas. This is still a work in progress but we had so much fun creating it that I wanted to share it with everyone.

I love the idea of putting your travel memories (here we've included things like museum tickets, train tickets, a map, etc.) into a piece of art work kind of like a giant scrap book. My tip is to layout all your travel ephemera to get an idea of the size of canvas you'll need. I think bigger is better in this case to give you lots of room to work. In this painting, we also added rubber stamps of famous Italian landmarks as well as the individual names of all the cities she visited such as Rome and Venice. She also choose gorgeous warm colors that she associated with Italy--golds, plums, rusts, etc. 

We used acrylic paints for quick drying and easier glazing. I also love the look and feel of waxy encaustic paintings so some of the pieces of paper have been sealed with tinted acrylic gel (such as a matte heavy gel).  Here, I tinted the gel with a touch of metallic gold and some interference blue. And certainly you could cover the entire canvas surface with a tinted gel as well, which will also help seal and protect the surface. 

Before I go wanted to offer a quick congrats to another student who not only got into the All Colorado Art Show with two beautiful landscapes but it's his first show as well. If you're an artist who shows you know how exciting that first show can be--so way to go Dallas!