#58...decoupaged canvas

I often turn to the book Animals for reference when doing a painting or art project that involves animals, seashells or insects. It is a book of copyright-free illustrations from the Nineteenth Century, back when anatomy was documented by detailed drawings.Once, when working on a painting, I copied and cut out a few of the drawings to use them to help me determine placement and size of the things I was planning to paint on my canvas. After laying down the cutouts, I really liked how the detailed line drawings looked against my more abstract painted background. Since the images are copyright free, I decided to try decoupaging them to my canvas and incorporating them into my painting. To decoupage, all I did was photocopy the image on good quality paper, carefully cut it out with tiny paper cutting scissors, position it on my painted canvas background, and glue it down with acid-free artists glue. I used my pastel sticks to add a little graffiti-style colored lines to the clip-art, and then I simply lacquered my entire canvas with acrylic varnish. Below are two pieces of art that I have incorporated these decoupaged images into.