I stopped by a garage sale by my house and came upon these gems. They were all wrapped up in there original plastic but had seen better days. I wound up having to throw away the actual art and the wood they were mounted on as they were moldy.
But I could save the beautiful metal frames from Italy. I cleaned them up and added some white highlights.
Then I tinted them with layers of transparent washes of Golden acrylics.
I traced the shape of the frame on paper made for acrylic paint and added a few layers of paint and tissue papers.
Now what to add next? I went through my old transparencies from teaching and cut this one up.
and layered those on top of the collages.
The glass needed attention next, I cleaned and scraped off the paper that was stuck to them and added details with pen and paint.
Now the fun of mixing and matching the collages with the frames and glass.
A more tedious next step was cutting out new backing for all of them.
I glued the cardboard in with liquid nails and glued paper over that with Elmers and then signed each one.
Last, I added small embellishments and dots and flourishes a la Michael DeMeng.
Before and After
What do you think? I sold one the next day and still have 6 available. Thanks for looking.
