Blog | Greater Cincinnati Watercolor Society

The program today is by one of our founding members Marilyn Bishop. She has served in many different areas of the club and has taught classes and workshop on different subjects. She also has a blog that you can find on the clubs blog.

Marilyn started the program by asking several question about art, one being what artist started doing Collage. It was Picasso that originally used collage as part of his work. She also showed us other collage artwork by famous artists. Marilyn gets some of her inspiration from an artist named Gustav Klimt.
Marilyn starts her bookmarks by using sections of her failed watercolor paintings. She cuts strips from the paintings measuring 1 ¾” by 7”. She also cuts sections of matt board for the backing of the bookmark. Sometimes the most difficult part of the project is coming up with the colors of matt board to use with the strip of the painting.

Marilyn uses envelopes to aid her process. She draws a design on the envelope, making notes, and uses the envelope to hold all of the supplies for that particular bookmark. Then when she is ready to work, she assembles all of her supplies and is ready to start! (You can see a line of completed bookmarks on the left side of the table above).

Marilyn "auditions" her pieces of failed watercolor paintings, mat board and various small pieces of collage paper.

She then embellishes the background , which is the matt board, with stencils or stamping designs. After achieving the desired effect on the background she proceeds to edge the matt board in a color to go with her design. In several examples, a silver or gold Pilot ink pen was used. Using an Elmer’s extreme school glue stick, she glues the painting to the matt board with the help of a roller to press the painting down. She sometimes enhances her painting strips by using an iridescent acrylic over her work before cutting the strip from her art work. Marilyn then continues to add other visual interest to her bookmark by placing bits of paper from on of her original paintings on her book mark. To make them a little more interesting she edges each piece with the same color pen that was used for the edge of the matt board. Sometimes Marilyn uses a stain art tissue to add to the design of the bookmark, a process that uses Golden’s fluid acrylic and water painted on art tissue. The use of foil paper and gold leaf adhesive is another technique that is used to add texture to the design of the bookmark.

Using thinned acrylic paint with a sponge to add texture.

Using a silver marker, run along the beveled edge of the matboard. Marilyn uses an old scrap of matboard as a ruler to keep the lines straight.

ABOVE: Marilyn uses stick glue on the back of her paper and a rubber brayer to thoroughly adhere the collaged pieces.

Using a metallic marker to add small designs.

Below we can follow the process for another bookmark.

Using a stamp to add design and texture to a bookmark.

Adding the metallic line on the edge of the bookmark.

When Marilyn uses tissue paper, instead of cutting the paper, she will take a thin brush, dip it in water, and use that to create a wet line on the paper which she then tears along that line for a deckled edge to the tissue paper.

Utilizing the brayer to adhere the collaged pieces.

Pressing some gold leaf onto the bookmark.

ABOVE: Sometimes Marilyn writes a saying on the bookmarks.

Marilyn uses "artist tissue paper" for her projects.

She will lightly spray the tissue paper and add watered down acrylics.

Here Marilyn stamps color using the "pop outs" from a child's game.

More design work with the metallic markers.

Pulling color off an old watercolor in preparation to use it on a bookmark.

Here you can see the addition of irridescent medium (TOP) to a failed painting which will later be cut and added to the bookmarks.

Marilyn brought along a variety of bookmarks to show us different designs and techniques that she has done. The bookmarks sell for $3.00 each.

We would like to thank Marilyn for the remarkable program. It gave us all inspiration on ways to use our failed paintings and bring them back to life.

Submitted by Kathy Kuyper, photos and captions by Deb Ward.

JANUARY 2013 PROGRAM - MARILYN BISHOP

JANUARY 2013 PROGRAM - MARILYN BISHOP