Mountain Collage Panels Design & Production Process
Producing artwork that combines digital and analog processes requires some back-and-forth between my garage studio and office with laser cutter in several steps. Here’s an outline of how I designed and made the mountain collage Lost Lake Triptych (also here in my art portfolio).
Step 1: Collage on panels
Using hand-marbled and painted paper, I made a 20″ x 16′ collage that forms an abstract mountain range. Colors flow from warm to cool. Using matte medium, I mounted the paper layers to tempered hardboard panels leftover from Vinyl Frontier, backed with 1/2″ MDF to improve the panel flatness when hung against the wall with French cleats. I placed the collage so that when the panels are spaced equally on the wall, the adjoining color blocks would align, and then trimmed them flush to the edge of the panel with a long, flat break-off knife.
Step 2: Tracing for wood lattice, scan tracing, vectorize and clean up
Still in the studio, I taped tracing paper to each panel and used a Sharpie to outline the lattice for each panel. Not worrying about piecing, I wanted to cover each panel in a loose pattern with plenty of room to see the collage below but add structure.
Next I cut the tracing paper into 6 equal portions, the largest size that would fit in my 8.5×11″ scanner bed. Labeling and file naming helps keep track of the pieces, just in case of a mixup. With Adobe Photoship, I combined the 6 tracings into one PSD and used guides, brush and eraser to align and seamlessly join the scans. The tiny gap left from cutting the paper apart and any smudges or dust in the scans cause noise and gaps that are annoying to fix in Illustrator, so it was easiest to fix in Photoshop.
To get ready to cut the wood lattice with the laser, I used Adobe Illustrator’s Live Trace tool to turn my PSDs of each of the panels into a vector. Then, I edited the vector as needed to remove any artifacts from scanning or tracing that weren’t removed in Photoshop.
Due to the 14×16″ bed size of my laser and the 20×20″ size of my final pieces, I had to cut the vectors into smaller pieces that interlock. Using a wider line width (14pt) instead of the usual ~6-7pt line, I added linework that blended with the tracing, and then used Illustrator’s Pathfinder tools with compound paths to divide the sections. To save materials, I was able to nest some of the pieces, but most required their own 13×15″ sheet of plywood.
Double checking the final cut wood pieces by laying them on the collaged panels is nerve-wracking: did it turn out the way it was intended?! Every successful join needs a little celebration – this is the payoff for all the digital work.
Step 7: Paint the lattice
To further integrate the lattice into the collage design, I turn to acrylic and latex paints. Watering the paints down, I brush on a blend of colors wet-on-wet. Once the paints soak into the wood, they can be modified with additional colored washes or semi-opaque white.
Step 8: Glue the lattice, add edge trim & final surface sealant
Spray waterbased polycrylic, satin finish, worked the best with the mixed materials to seal wood and paper and bring out the colors of the assembled piece.
