"Paint-Skin Collage and Mosaic"
Author: Al_Razza, Contributing Editor
http://www.wetcanvas.com/Articles2/62215/588/

Do you remember your first paint-skin? You were probably helping your dad clean paint off a window. You know, that spot where the paintbrush hit the glass and the paint dried there? You took a razor and pealed it off. Or perhaps your first experience was after opening an old can of paint. The surface of the paint had cured, leaving a skin across the top of the wet paint below. You thought it was interesting but unusable. Or was it? Well now I am here to tell you of what you may have missed out on. It has come to my attention that there are many artists creating and using paint-skins in their work.
I have been using paint-skins in my artwork for nearly 20 years and believe I've discovered some unique ways to use them. My quest has been to separate what I do from what is conventionally accepted as painting. I prefer to call my works, acrylic paintings or mixed media paintings, but inevitably questions arise. How is it done and what are these surfaces made of? That left me with the need for adjectives to describe them. Paint-skin collage seemed natural enough, if not completely accurate. Relief painting seemed good to, but they weren’t molded with heavy gel or impasto; instead, corrugated, with rolled over layers of paint-skin which gave them a rippling effect. After looking to some definitions for answers, I came up with these simple, but obvious choices as they might apply to what I do.
• Collage: a decorative accumulation of diverse materials, usually paper, cloth, or wood, which are glued on top of one another to form a picture or sequence of pictures.
• Paint-skin: Paint, which has dried to form a thin layer or sheet, and not bound or fixed to any surface.
• Paint-Skin Collage: thin layers of dried paint, which have been decoratively layered atop one another to form a picture or design.
• Mosaic: a surface decoration made by inlaying various colored pieces of material to form a pattern or picture, usually tiles made of stone, ceramic, or glass.
• Paint-Skin Mosaic: an accumulation of thin pieces of dried paint-skin, placed side by side to form a pattern or picture.
The Process

The medium I prefer for making a paint-skin is acrylic paint and clear liquid polymer. Acrylic paint is preferred over oil, watercolor, and tempera for its flexibility, drying time, and cost. I have no preference for one brand over another and I've tried most that are available, but the brands I use most often are Utrecht & Nova Color.

Gallons of translucent color are mixed using about 75% to 90% liquid acrylic gloss or matt medium. This is a personal preference not a necessity. The paint’s flow rate should be quite liberal, as it would if you were to use standard house paint, or near that rate.
I use two types of applicator easels. This is an easel where the paint is applied to form a sheet of paint-skin. One easel uses a sheet of ¼” glass, about 48” x 60"", and rotates 360 degrees, like a paddle wheel. This allows me to use gravity to control the flow of color, as well as use both sides of the easel. The second easel appears more conventional. It has a removable 48" x 60" polypropylene panel, which rotates 360 degrees like a windmill.
Squirt bottles, paint knives, brushes, combs are used to apply color. X-acto knives are used to cut through the skin and templates simultaneously, when working on a mosaic. A utility knife is used with a metal straight edge to cut through larger heavier skins. Scissors and even sheet metal cutters may be needed for cutting through heavy sheets that have been cured for a long time.
The paint is poured over the glass to form an aesthetic mass of color. I prefer squirt bottles to a brush, or knife, though knives can produce some beautiful skins when using a highly viscous paint. I tilt the glass and let the color run over itself to form layers of varied colors - a marbleized technique. Solid color skins may be created in this same fashion.

After the paint has covered the surface, I rotate the glass to the table position. Then let the color cure for a minimum of three days with a fan on continuously circulating the air. The fan helps promote clarity and faster curing of the paint. Once cured, I can begin to remove the skin from the glass.
I can remove the entire sheet if I wish by covering it with a sheet of brown Kraft paper, and roll it onto a 2” PVC pipe. I use a metal wallpaper knife about 8” wide to assist the skin off the glass as I turn the skin onto the pipe. The approximate thickness of the skin for best results is about .030”. Scoring the edges of the skin assures no paint has bonded to the edge of the easel, which might restrict the ease in which the skin will lift from the glass. Full removal of the sheet will allow me to view both sides to determine which I prefer. I must watch out not to let the skin come up against itself. This can cause sections to stick to one another and prevent a clean removal. The longer the skin remains curing, even over months, will help it resist, but not totally prevent it from sticking to itself.
Now, I can cut pieces to a specific size and shape, and apply them to a canvas, or use them over a template to create a mosaic. Sometimes, I drop the dry skin back into wet paint to create a corrugated relief effect or just lay them flatly back into the wet paint. I am always looking for some new way to create and use them. I am sure you will come up with your own variations.
If done correctly both sides of the skin are beautifully colored, and they can be used and stored like a seamstress would use cloth from a bolt of fabric. The skins are strong, yet flexible. They will not tear easily, and can be stretched slightly. Upon the first few days of removal from the glass easel the sheet will shrink a bit and one should allow for this shrinkage. When I apply a piece of paint skin, I am looking at the finished product. I do not have to wait or guess to see what the skin will reveal. Remember, the skin is made like a sheet of cloth, to be cut and made into an artwork. So when I am working, I am not so much guessing what will be revealed, but removing and applying pieces of skin directly on a canvas or temporarily transferring it to a glass table. Once there, I can watch the image emerge, just like any conventional artwork would if I were just painting it with a brush.

The paint-skin collages are just layers of paint-skins. Only paint-skins are used to build the collage. Square tiles and random shapes are made by placing dry pieces into a wet sheet of color and allowed to cure. Once cured, they are cut into various shapes and applied to a canvas, forming an expressionist image or design. It is the many layering of color and rough surface that makes them visually distinctive. I define this layering as the one characteristic that makes them a collage.
For paint-skin mosaics, a master model and several duplicate patterns are used to cut out the pieces of skin. Once I have a model to work from, I organize a palette, mixing the color to create a skin for each color field in the design. When the skins are made, I cut each piece and fit them to the master pattern, which is laid out under a sheet of glass. The placing of each piece side by side is the defining characteristic that makes them a mosaic.
When someone views my work, it pulls them in, closer and closer like a magnet. Why? Because the paint-skin surfaces are filled with unusual textures that viewers find intriguing, but it is their unusual nature that viewers also struggle with.

Some words used to describe them are: glass, marble, Mother of Pearl, tile, ribbon or cloth. I have heard similar descriptions from others who have tried this type of process. Even a comment that some paint company might be using this as some promotional gimmick. But the question is, Are they paintings? I believe they are, even if paint is not used in a conventional manner.
Many of my paint-skins stand off the canvas, as high as 2”, like a low relief sculpture, which leaves the surface a mass of snake-like ribbons, twisting and turning. In the mosaics, the colors rotate and twist like something out of a spin art machine, yet organized in very distinctive patterns. Still others fall somewhere in between. Their tactile sensation is strong, and this evokes a primal need inside the viewer, prompting them with “A need to touch”. And I want that.

But whether I am making a process work of art, or a decorative design, the color's complexity is like nothing else I have seen or been able to duplicate in any other way. So, I employ the paint-skin in the making of an artwork, but not exclusively to finish it. I alter everything to suit the completion of the work, adding whatever materials I wish.