Altered Silver

I was embarking on a new project, to make a quick, daily collage in the spirit of a "gesture drawing." I wanted to keep all these collages together in the same spot, but after putting the first collage into a composition book, I discovered that the composition book just wasn't going to work out for me. Others seem to be having good results with them, but I simply couldn't accept the too-thin paper as a support for glue and pencil and paint and whatever else might be needed.

I looked around and selected an old hardback book I'd recently acquired in a book exhange. It's about collecting postage stamps as an investment practice and was published in the early 50's, so it's quite old and out-of-date. The previous owner had generously marked most of the pages with some kind of black pencil or crayon, to highlight certain paragraphs and statements. I decided to leave those be and just accept them as "lovemarks." The cover and pages still seemed to be in pretty decent shape, however. Very carefully, I removed my paper bits from my first collage in the composition book. I'd used glue stick for adhering them, so they came up relatively easily.

I transferred the bits into the stamp-collecting book, retaining the same arrangement, but needing to compress their positions somewhat to adjust for the smaller dimensions of the page. I had used watercolor over the initial glueing, so the pieces had some strange colors on them. I didn't want to attempt using watercolor in the stamp-collecting book, so I used colored pencil as a substitute. And voilà, my first "gluebook" collage was in its new home.

What can one actually do with a composition book? I've got three of them now, and it seems like they should be good for something, right?

I decided to paint this one. The cover, that is.


I sponged on individual layers of sienna, yellow ochre and dioxazine purple. Finally, I sponged on clear iridescent medium to give portions a bit of shine (if I followed these steps again, I'd apply the iridescent medium with a brush to keep it more consistent, although it is less metallic-like than it looks in this photo). Then I added a paper bit on one side so that it would be obvious which end was "front." The uninspired scrap I grabbed for this purpose is a multicolored happy-face that says, "There's always something new."

I must say, this composition book looks very enticing now, less utilitarian and more inviting, like it's just asking to play a role in "something special."

But currently, I'm only using its pages as undersheets (to catch stray glue streaks) when glueing my daily bits.




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