"Painting" with Tissue Paper

This wonderful technique combines drawing, bleeding tissue paper and glue to create a colorful one of a kind painting. You can find two different kinds of colored art tissue paper in art supply stores. One type keeps its color when wet, and the other type "bleeds" its color out when wet. Using bleeding tissue paper for this project will allow the colors to run and blend into each other in beautifully unpredictable ways.

You can see my video lesson on Tissue Paper Painting here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwICGuREYAU

Here's how you make one.

TISSUE PAPER PAINTING

Materials:

white recycled mat board or cardboard, 9"x12" or larger

pencil with eraser

Thick black permanent Sharpie pen

Bleeding tissue paper, assorted colors, torn into small pieces

White glue

Old brush

Small recycled plastic container for water

Water

Procedure:

1. Cover your work surface or table with a plastic tablecloth or newspaper to protect it.

2. Using your pencil, do a line drawing on the white board, keeping your lines simple and bold.

3. Go over the pencil lines with a thick Sharpie pen. Erase any stray pencil lines.

4. In your plastic container, make a mixture of 2/3 glue and 1/3 water. Stir with a brush.

5. Working a small area at a time, paint the glue mixture onto the board, apply a small piece of the bleeding tissue paper on top of the glue, and paint another coat of glue on top of the tissue. The pieces of tissue should overlap, creating transparent mixed colors, and the colors will also bleed into each other and onto the white board. Allow your tissue shapes to fall outside the black lines once in a while.

6. Continue this process, until you have covered most of the board with colored tissue. If you wish, some white spaces may be left uncolored. When the glue mixture is wet, the colors may appear cloudy, but once it's dry, it will look clear.

7. Don't forget to wash the glue mixture out of your brush very thoroughly.

8. Allow the board to dry overnight. If thin boards buckle when dry, they can be flattened by placing the completely dry board under some heavy books for a couple of days. You may want to mount your "painting" on a larger board of a contrasting color to frame it for display.

Graham's Tissue Paper Painting