Tutorial - Mixed Media Collage Painting - Put A Bird On It

As promised in this post here is a quick tutorial showing the the steps to creaing the "Mint Bird".

I painted a small 12x12 abstract on stretched canvas...but it seemed to be lacking interest. Maybe another layer or more detail.

I had just finished another piece, a pretty cool bird painting on paper. The only thing is the background wasn't what I had hoped for.

The bird was painted with thick textured acrylic on paper, so I cut away the parts that didn't work and kept the good parts, cutting the background into different shapes. 

I like the way this bird shape looks with parts of background cut away. Some of the pieces were saved to arrange later.

Next I tried different angles to see what worked best, laying the bird onto the abstract canvas piece.

Then with a brayer I "glued" or a better term "collaged" the bird onto the canvas with acrylic gel medium. The other cutout pieces of the background were arranged in an interesting pattern and collaged into place.

In this detail you can see I've added a few dictionary pieces. One is the definition of a bird.

After Medium gel had dried little circle shapes in green acrylic were added in just the right places to give an all over cohesive look.

This is the finished piece. Sometimes all it takes is to put a bird on it! This very same painting used in this tutorial is  available just for you in the shop.

If you are an artist and have made artwork using a technique similar to this, I would love to see what you have done. Please add a link to your art piece in the comments below.

Have a great Labor Day Weekend, stay safe and see you soon!