Red Tree Collage

 I liked my felted red trees so much that I decided to do a collage of them.

I wanted it to have a layered look so I spray painted these stencils with the general color scheme using Liquitex Acrylic spray paints.

I then started collaging papers on my wood substrate. I would only need paper where the substrate would be visible through the stencils.

Here is the finished paper collage before attaching the stencils.

Here it is right before I glued the stencils down. 

I did add more paint over the collaged papers to help them blend with the stencils (and added a tree trunk and branches on the left tree, blue sky showing through some of the leaf areas). I showed it to my husband and he kept asking what the letters spelled. They were still too prominent, not just a texture or layer like I had originally planned. This definitely was not what I had in mind and decided the stencils had to come off.

I decided to paper collage over the whole surface after the stencils were removed. Here is a progress photo.

The collage part is mainly done. I want to use some washes of paint to darken the sky and make the grass greener. I will use paint and some more paper bits to help the trees look like trees instead of red balloons.  This is way better than when it had the stencils on it and I think it will be great in the end. Which is a good thing, since I have another one with yellow trees and a purple sky that still has the stencils on it and will need work as well.

Better pictures next time, I was in the basement studio and my good camera's battery was dead.