How To Resin Collage Art

[Music] hey everyone joanne from art resin here and today i am joined by artist daniel ansta daniel thank you so much for coming to work with us today thanks for having me so danielle is a collage artist in fact you can see some of his beautiful pieces behind us here so daniel what will we be working on today uh we're going to recreate this design here on a 12 by 12 using more of a beachy theme oh that sounds fantastic so i know that there are certain steps you need to take when you're resonating over paper so i'm really looking forward to learning all of your techniques yeah let's get started [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay danielle do you want to walk us through the materials that you brought with you today yes so we got your regular school glue stick i got a pair of scissors i've got a ruler and a pencil so that we can find the center of our board an exacto knife for what we have to trim the edges and then we got our paper which i usually get from a coffee table book so we won't have a problem when we're pouring resin over top of it that's amazing and it's really important to use good quality paper right when you're resining and my mind immediately would go to like a high-end kind of magazine but coffee table books that's a fantastic idea yeah you can use uh vogue or national geographic have good quality paper or a magazine dedicated to photography they're also good as well yeah and i imagine they would be great for images as well in colors and stuff too yeah yeah that's a great tip and if you do use a lower quality paper what are some of the problems that you've come across uh you're definitely going to get some bleed through you're going to see what's on the other side of the paper and uh that's no good yeah and the paper can also like absorb the resin too sometimes right yeah okay awesome and then we are also going to be working on a 12 by 12 panel that we painted white so what is our first step our first step is going to find the middle of the board so i'm just going to draw some diagonal lines corner to corner and these also are going to give us nice guiding lines uh while we're making the design so that once we reach these lines we kind of know that that's the direction the paper is going to have to go in because it can get kind of wonky in between so now what's your next step to create your circular piece uh so we're gonna do the middle first and normally i do a black or something really dark i don't think that's gonna work with our theme today so instead i'm just gonna look for the darkest color we have and i think it's going to be one of these yeah that looks best so that's going to be the center yeah that'll be our center and so we'll just start cutting these out okay so it doesn't matter like what size you cut your strips do they all need to be the same size as well they don't have to be the same size you don't want to get them too thin though uh they'll be harder to maneuver so when they're nice and thick it's easier to get it in a circular pattern okay so we're just gonna glue [Music] and you can either glue put the glue onto the paper onto the board for the first one here it's just as easy to get it right on board and you have a lot more control don't you with a glue stick rather than using like liquid school glue it can be a little messy and and the great thing with using the resin is that you can use these basically school glues because the resin is going to seal it nicely but if you were just doing a collage without the resin uh school glues will break down so your paper will start to fall off oh i see right so in that case you'd have to use like a clear medium or something so you find that this this glue stick holds better uh when you're doing the resin so daniel i'm watching you create this circle and it you're making it look so effortless but i know you're following a technique yeah i'm just making sure that i'm going corner to corner here that'll give us a nice uniform circle so you put your first piece down on your guideline and then you're going meeting the corner on this first yeah meeting the corner here and here and then down at the bottom as well yeah yeah so you get a perfect like diagonal the great thing is is that your last piece is going to cover up any mistakes that you've made and you're saying the glue stick is really great too because it will allow you to kind of slide it yeah you can slide it around and there's not gonna be too much residue on there yeah look at that amazing so then we can move on to our next color okay so the first circle is complete yes our circle's complete okay so you just pick whatever one you want next and cut it again and do you follow like a pattern in terms of like color do you like for your next circle um well i will try to keep an order of what image i'm using but as you go you might find that things look better beside each other so i don't stick to it if i don't have to do you ever use photographs i have used photographs before and those work really well because also they're nice and thick so the resin is not going to do anything to them so i'm just going to start on our guiding line and you're going to overlap from the first circle a little bit okay [Music] and then you're going corner corner right now well you're kind of going center okay at the bottom and then the corner of it okay oh yes so you've met the center down here on the first piece and then the corner up at the top yeah and so you're going with a darker and then a lighter color yeah that's i like the contrast in doing that and when i'm gluing these down i kind of like to mix up the orientation of them so that it's not i want it to be a little bit abstract i don't like it to just look like one image going around you know what i mean i usually don't do the same image all the way around so i'll probably do like a third and then switch the image so where do you source your um your coffee table books from um from secondhand stores secondhand stores the bargain section of big bookstores and there's also some great discount stores online so today we're working with a beach theme like do you find that you often have a theme for your work or is it you gravitate more towards like colors or i definitely try to stick with a theme that's usually something a little more abstract than doing like a beach theme i usually start with the word like passion or spirit and then try to find images and colors that i associate with that word oh that's great and so we've done about a third so i'm going to switch to a new image i kind of just look to see what will look good we've been doing beach so let's go back to some water so what would your word be for this good question um maybe coastline [Music] okay so i'm gonna switch the color up because we've done another third i'm gonna just look for something that's a little different so it's not all the same i kind of like these waves coming in and some white do you normally kind of break it up into thirds for the first uh circle around yeah i usually do thirds [Music] [Music] so you just want to make sure that you're covering all your spaces and that everything's closed up and it's perfectly fine if you need to overlap anything it looks fantastic i love it so now we're ready for the next row yeah so i think we're going to bring back in the color from the center so if you did um three on the first row do you think you might do like four different colors maybe on this next one uh we'll probably do four colors uh it's not a formula that i kind of stick to it's kind of just whatever image you're using these images are pretty long so we should be good with four [Music] i was going to ask you so that sometimes can be an issue with collage art that you've got lots of opportunity for air to get trapped which can off gas or release as bubbles in your resin so do you have any kind of safeguards that you use to prevent that well i do after i'm done i seal it with a clear acrylic medium but also i will check in on it maybe every half hour just to make sure nothing's mysteriously popped up yeah but you're doing a really great job gluing as well which is also really important because like your strip is really well bonded to the to the panel into the paper make sure there's no air bubbles yeah so on the piece that we're working on now and the piece that you have on the table there you're working in like with two inch strips do you ever work with longer strips or with strips that maybe maybe are cut into like triangles or i've never done triangles before i have done uh longer strips about i think there were three inches for a bigger piece but i generally stick with the 12x12s or the 8x8s and i find that 2 inches a good size for that [Music] wow danielle this is amazing first of all i am so impressed with how perfect your circle is you're working with your guidelines i can see how helpful that is and then like the colors are so amazing to stand back and look and they harmonize so beautifully but then if you look up close like these are all um you know beach chairs and towels and there's some people swimming here it's so amazing yeah that's one of my favorite things about creating these pieces that from afar they just look like a geometric abstract but then people can get up close and see the little details that are hidden in there yeah so much interest so what's next what's your next step next step is we're gonna just keep uh doing the same thing for another layer we're gonna go into our next color palette so i'm gonna use this blue again but i'm going to make sure that i place it on another side i don't want to keep going on the blue on the same spot so i might start over here [Music] daniel it looks amazing again i'm so incredibly impressed at how perfect your circle is and i love how you balanced out your colors it looks amazing so i guess all that's left to do now is just um these corners right yeah so for the corners we're really going to pay attention to what colors we use uh so down here we have lots of the browner sand so we're going to put that in this back one here and on this side there's lots of the waves so we're going to put that one opposite and again beach goers opposite wherever they've been and then last we have the blue yeah perfectly balanced out it looks great so you're going to cut the same sort of strips again yeah same strips and i'm going to glue them down in the same way great so the one thing that is a little different about doing corners is that i'm not going to go clockwise i'm actually in the middle and then move out to either side okay and you're overlapping like ever so slightly yeah [Music] great so the panel is completely covered looks fantastic but i'm assuming we're going to trim the edges right yes this guy needs a little bit of a haircut so we're going to use our exacto knife and just uh run along the edge and then trim everything off okay perfect also you're doing it that way i assume that you would flip it uh no i like going this way and you just kind of downward motions so that you're not lifting too much off oh that works amazing and you're going really slowly too yeah oh so i can see you've got your thumb against the blade and you're guiding it yeah on the side of the panel just keeping it flush on this side [Music] so after you're done cutting the edges if you notice that any pieces are lifting away because uh maybe they didn't get enough glue the first time just put a little bit of a glob on a loose piece of paper and slide it underneath and just glue the underside of that and push it down all right that's done and we're ready for the next step great so what are we going to do next we're going to put on a clear gloss medium it's going to help the paper stay down and not float when we put on the resin and it'll also seal it so that it doesn't become waterlogged okay so it's going to help prevent any edges from curling up or anything like that exactly yeah okay good i like using a roller because it gives me a nice thin layer have you ever used um a spray sealant i have used a spray sealant before when uh one time when i did it with uh photographs like actual photographs and i found that the spray sealant kind of melted the colors off the photographs but i've never tried it on coffee table book paper so that might actually be a great idea kind of i think it would be better coverage as well but i love that this kind of acts almost like a brayer as well right the uh the roller so it's really helping to like make sure everything is bonded oh yeah great and another really good reason for um sealing especially when you're working with paper and resin is because you have layered paper there's lots of opportunity for trapped air to uh to get caught in there which is going to release his bubbles in your resin right so sealing it is going to help mitigate that as well so you coated the whole piece and how long is it going to take to dry now before we can resin should just take a couple of minutes oh perfect in the meantime we can measure and mix exactly all right so we have taped off the sides of our piece right because daniel's gonna apply the resin just to the top so we've taped off the sides and we've mounted it up on these plastic cups so it doesn't stick to the work surface um we're gonna check to make sure it is horizontal it's perfect good job and now it's time to measure and mix all right so i went to the uh art resin calculator it's at artresin.com calculator punched in 12 by 12 and it let me know that we need five ounces total of resin and hardener combined and it's a little bit cold here today so we gave our bottles a warm water bath just to help minimize any bubbles doesn't matter if you measure your resin or your hardener first as long as it's a one-to-one ratio and then we're gonna mix for three minutes scraping the sides and scraping the bottom all right and the sealant is nice and dry now so here comes the fun part that really makes the color pop doesn't it it's amazing to see yeah all those teals the turquoises are just like coming to life now what do you find it does for your collage work the resin coating uh well it makes the colors pop and it just gives it like a cool look that i don't think you can get with anything else and that's it amazing so we've done our dust check picked out any little bits of dust and it looks absolutely perfect you did a flawless pour thank you good job now cover it to make sure no more dust gets in there and at my house make sure no animal hair gets in yep and we're gonna let this uh cure for 24 hours and we'll be back tomorrow so we're back and now this is my favorite part revealing the piece you want to do the honors ah looks so good daniel i love it what do you think yeah it turned out really well as you can see sometimes the resin will get along the edges but i love the effect it creates yeah it kind of makes like sort of a ray effect it's it really adds to the whole geometric feel of the piece absolutely and i love how my favorite part of my creating these is that on the wall standing back it looks different and then i think the lines invite people to come up and see what the individual pieces are there's so much to see in here and again like i absolutely love your color palette i love it amazing job and a flawless pour like i said yesterday it's absolutely perfect should we take the tape off yes yeah this actually is a perfect time it's been about 18 hours since we poured so the resin is dry to the touch and you could hang it on the wall right now if you wanted to and it's perfect time to take the the tape off because the resin hasn't fully cured that would be at the 72 hour mark so daniel if you wanted to like ship that out to a client then you'd want to wait the full 72 hours and it'll be rock hard and you can see it really helps to have a good quality masking tape oh yeah when you use lesser quality tape um and you're peeling it just rips like crazy so this is there's a couple spots where it's sticking but it's it's actually really really good you can just use a blade and x-acto knife to get off any little bits that might still be stuck on and there it is it is amazing i absolutely love how it turned out your colors and the pattern it looks fantastic we loved having you here and teaching us so thanks so much for coming in my pleasure so if you have any questions for daniel please leave them in the comments below don't forget to hit subscribe and we will see you next time bye bye [Applause] [Music] you