The first part of creating the collage started with blocking in the sky, the river and sandbanks. Bands of horizontal color will span the entire painting. I use a rubber “shaper” to mix paint and to apply soft gel to the paper, but I mostly used a natural sponge for painting.  In this photo I’m using cyan blue and manganese blue, blended with glazing medium for the water. My palette is a plastic plate. 

The brightest color will be the yellow of the trees, but they needed to show more shape so I lightly sprayed the bottoms of the yellow paper I’d already painted and dabbed on darker quinacridone yellow to create the undersides of the trees. I added a few darker shades with a combination of quinacridone burnt orange and cyan blue. Because the fibers were wet, it created soft edges.

I needed to get a feel for how the colored paper would look on the colored canvas.  Using some low tack masking tape made for drafting, I stuck the papers temporarily onto the canvases.

I got a bit ahead of myself and started gluing down the dark spruce trees. I quickly took them off and put the clouds on, then put the spruce trees over them. Whew!

I glued the pieces of paper by turning them upside down on the plastic bag, then spreading them with the soft gel.

Here is a closeup of all the textures:

Below is a closeup of the sketch I’m working with and one of the jackets of the children playing on the beach. Like playing with paper dolls! As of today I have several people cut out and I’m moving them about on the beach.