"Deep Longing"

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"Solitude is a place of deep longing for the only One who can satisfy." Many pursuits can give temporary satisfaction and take up hours of our time, but we were created to have an intimate relationship with God. That is the only thing that can truly fill the deepest longing of our soul.

This piece is another venture into contrasting opacity with transparency. A good rule of thumb is to choose equal pieces of opaque collage elements and transparent elements. By arranging them various ways, you will eventually find the right overlap and placement for each piece. The wonderful thing that happens is that you can see every layer in the piece. It is one of the most effective ways of achieving depth with layering.

The initial background was begun with gesso with some areas having a lot of texture. That, too, will add another dimension to your collage. Cadimium Orange was painted over the entire gesso surface with a solid application. Speedball Printing Ink came next, leaving some of the orange peeking through. At this point, you must spray with acrylic coating because the printing ink is water soluble. Silver leaf was then adhered one section at a time over gel matte medium straight from the jar. If the silver leaf looks too solid and static...simply apply some gel matte medium to your brayer and roll over the surface. The stickiness of the medium will pull more of the silver leaf from the surface.

All in all, this is a wonderful way to create a collage. It also helps to have some silk tissue paper (the most transparent paper I've ever found) and be able to print it on your printer. Simply make a copy of the image on regular paper...watch how it exits the printer...use removable tape to tape the transparent paper over the image...and send it through the printer again in the same way it went through the first time. Spray with acrylic coating and you will be ready to adhere it to your surface. And there you have it...a few more things to think about.