Adding Cuttings to a Painting

If you want to get into mixed media painting and maybe include some cuttings in your composition – these can be newspaper clippings, printed photos on A4 paper, or things that you cut out of books or magazines then there are a few ways that you can apply these things to the canvas and they can often be really effective.

Most of the time I am wanting to use something transparent to apply the clipping and the best thing I have found is to use decoupage medium. This is specifically designed for this purpose (well maybe not adding to a painting but it is designed for paper type items) and does work really well.

Ideally do as much of the painting as you can before you apply any of the paper items as it looks a bit messy if you start trying to paint around them. Then you can add a bit of paint at the edges and use a transparent medium to fix them to the painted canvas.

It does look like decoupage medium is not specifically sold under that name in the US but I believe that Mod Podge is a very popular product range that has similar mediums in both a matt and gloss finish so you could use that.

You can also use paint itself to add paper items to your collage by sticking the paper item on when the paint is still wet (make sure you have enough paint on) – particularly if you are using acrylic paint but obviously you have to be careful not to paint over the item itself (or you can just use a glaze).

Also the ever useful pva can be used instead of the decoupage or Mod Podge and this often works just as well – in fact this is sometimes better as you can also glaze over this if you want a slight wash colour on your collage/mixed media painting.