What is the Opossum Doing?
- Kaaren Poole
- Aug 11
- 4 min read
We’ve had a few opossum sightings lately, including this one that I managed to snap a photo of. It inspired me to create an art journal spread around this sweet little visitor.
Problems With the Photo
I printed the photo, thinking I could use it in the spread. But the more I looked at it, the more problems I had with using the photo itself. I liked the idea of the opossum being up in the tree, but the branches were just too much. I considered painting over the branches and filling in the parts of her image which they were obscuring. But still, it didn’t seem that it would work out.
So, I decided I’d need to draw her. No problem, as I very much like drawing. My intention was still to have her sitting up in a tree, but it would be a tree of my own construction, fitting into the spread as I envisioned it. Admittedly, my vision of it was not precise, but I had something in mind. I’d have the opossum up in the tree, observing a scene below.
Starting With Collage
My first step was to adhere the drawing to the page and then decide where I wanted the branches. In another spread from a couple of years ago, I tried defining the branches of a tree by adding different collage pieces in the shapes formed between the branches, and I thought I’d try the same thing here, hopefully with more success than I remember from my previous attempt.
I decided to use bits and pieces from magazine pages featuring text and the color green. Here’s that first layer. Just the beginning of the beginning, but I had a start.
Wrinkles!
Look at those wrinkles, though! I try to avoid them in two ways. I think wrinkles happen when the paper gets wet and stretches, gets glued down, then dries. By the way, this seems to happen frequently with coated paper like magazine pages, but rarely with uncoated, more absorbent paper like pages from older paperbacks.
So, the first way I try to avoid wrinkles is to get the clipping damp before I glue it down. The second is to apply the adhesive—I used Liquitex matte gel medium, which is water based—on both the back of the clipping and the surface I’m gluing it to. Being damp, the clipping should already be stretched and so less likely to wrinkle as it dries. This strategy, however well thought-out it may seem, often fails me, as it did here, especially in the lower right corner piece.
I’ve learned to live with wrinkles, but I don’t like it! In this case, I decided to go all in and glued deliberately wrinkled tissue paper over everything but the opossum!
There! Take that! Extensive wrinkle texture, almost like I’d intended it from the beginning.
Integrating the Collage
Then, just for good measure, I decided to add some thinned gesso. Some I brushed lightly here and there. In other places, I stamped the spread with gesso on bubble wrap. This was primarily for more texture—in this case, visual rather than tactile. But it also reduced the value contrast among the collaged clippings by lightening them, especially the darker ones which I thought were too prominent.
At this point, I knew what would probably come next, namely, the branches. Clear enough. But still, I didn’t quite feel ready to proceed.
What is the Opossum Doing?
But I didn’t have a very clear image of where I was going with this spread. What is the opossum doing? What story would she tell? What else would show up? And what about the green? Would there be other colors?
There were so many questions that I decided to let the spread sit for a while. In other words, I’d give it a chance to speak to me!
Can’t wait to see where it—or, more properly, she— leads me…
By the way, I recently started a YouTube channel and there are several videos there about art journaling, most of them around 15 to 20 minutes long. You can access my channel by clicking the button below. Why not check it out? And if you like what you see, please subscribe. Subscribing is free and helps my videos get found.
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