Demo - Playing with Ink and Collage

hi good morning louise fletcher abstract painter i'm all black and white behind me and today i thought rather than just sitting talking at the camera i would talk while i was doing some work so i've been working with ink and in black and white as you can see and there is method to my madness i've just finished a major project i've been working on for a couple of years working in acrylic paint and mixed media on boards and canvases of all different sizes and shapes and i've finished those paintings and i'm now writing a book about the process and hopefully fingers crossed that book will be out in october 2021 in the meantime i find myself at that stage that we get to as artists where we we still want to create like i always want to create that never goes away but i don't have a project i don't have a thing i'm exploring i and when that happens i always choose to do the thing i love so at the moment what i really love i've enjoyed for a long time is ink and collage and i'm putting the two together and i've been inspired and i'll explain that to you in a second let me switch around and show you what i'm up to so first of all i want to show you where these ideas come from i am you know a bit at a loss i don't know what to do i love ink so i'm deciding to play with ink i've taken a couple of courses with karen stamper look her up she's a fantastic college artist and she teaches sketchbook courses and she teaches working in these concertina sketchbooks and the first stages of karen's process that she teaches is to put down ink washes and to play with ink and i found and then she and then to collage and then to start painting over but i found oh i really love this part i like the ink black and white which is not surprising because i've made a lot of ink paintings in the past so but i just sometimes forget how much i love it and somehow i think i feel i should be using paint but actually i really like ink so i am going to be doing some ink explorations over the next few months inspired by that course and i went into a larger book and started by using the things karen teaches and then i thought oh i wonder what happens if i add watercolor and i had some watercolors left over from a long time ago and i've started to bring it in here and i don't love what i've done but i i do love this so there's something in here for me whenever i see something that i love oh there's something in there um and this is what i teach all the time find what you love follow what you love i don't like i made some pattern here with dots i don't like that i don't mind it in other people's paintings i don't like this pattern don't like it okay good to know just learn what you like all that matters is what you like not what other people like some other people will feel like you so that's as far as i've got in that book but it made me want to go further and so then i've got a plan for what i'm gonna do i made these the other day these are just it's a big sheet of dry plain drawing paper just average drawing paper but it's 220 gsm so it's fairly sturdy and it's cheap it's not like buying watercolor paper where it feels precious plus it's thin enough it's quite thick but i can collage it on and that's important for what i'm gonna do and here's another one and so it's just playing with big marks against little splatters and thin lines and what do i like and what don't i like and further noticing and this was a tip from karen's course what to photocopy the parts you like and actually my photocopy wasn't really working let me get these out of the way so you can see the inks running it so some bits haven't worked but that's fine i can cut off like that one hasn't really worked but i love that black splotch and that's really enlarged from the original so i'm looking at the marks and i'm taking parts and just printing them out on my home printer i like the way the inks run here i really like this piece it's just all the different gradations of ink and the sizes of that compared to the sizes of the little splatters and then i a small version of that and then enlarging it and then enlarging it even more printed off the side for some reason but that's fine this mark and that small and then that enlarged really big that one came out blurry unfortunately and that one didn't print at all but the stripes going across might be quite nice for collage a couple i printed in color from the watercolor i really like this light texture and so noticing i'm just trying to notice what am i enjoying about this what what's appealing to me because that's the key it's all about what we like and i think so those are not wasted because bits of these are going to go into those sketchbooks and bits are going to go on to the collages i'm about to make now i've also got some scraps from previous ink pieces that i've already worked with and then some handmade tissue paper which came from susan hart who's an american artist sent me a lovely package of handmade tissue papers and this has got like coffee grounds in it i might use that sewing patterns i buy these on ebay i've got tons of them they're just nice because they're tissue and they've got these interesting marks and stuff and text and numbers on and they're not expensive and then also on ebay i buy like packets of paper ephemera sometimes you get letters from people sometimes you just get pages from books but i like these just for the surprising different things and i like text in things so sheet music i can tell that that one's going to be better for collage than that that's got a kind of shiny surface to it so that's going to be great but this one will be all right um so just bits that i've grabbed i'm no planning about what this is going to be at all but what i want to do is set myself a challenge and i'm going to show you what i do so this is another sketchbook one of many many sketchbooks and in here i keep just things that interest me and i make collages and i work on compositions really and these are usually torn up bits of other paintings that i've haven't worked this i think was some tissue paper and a bit of a painting that didn't work but so nothing gets wasted but what i wanted to show you are these are some ink ink different inks for these oh i missed the paint and all these will get used i'll just leave it when it's wet um this is now this was inspired by a conversation i had with lewis noble look him up on youtube he's a great artist and he collages landscape pieces together and i had a really bad landscape painting and i could see some bits of it that weren't too bad so i had to go play in just doing a lewis noble and i would never sell something where i've taken basically someone else's idea this is just for me to play and learn but i so appreciate other artists and the inspiration that they give and i think sometimes some of us feel we can't take inspiration from other people you can you just can't sell it as your own but you can that's you know you go to art school they'll get you copying the old masters and things to learn how things are done but i've always loved ripping up drawings and so with this ink project i decided to start taking that similar idea and these are just scraps of failed ink pieces and what i've done is i've stuck them in and then i've continued to work on them a little bit and that's what i'm going to do today this was another ink piece here's another piece so kind of like the swirling movement of this and i don't know where all this is going that's the point it's just going to go somewhere and i will understand it in the end that's the point of making the work by making the work we understand why we're doing what we're doing so let's get started i have torn up these pieces of paper the benefit of working on pieces of paper versus working in the book is that once i've stuck things in the book they have to dry and i can't turn to another page however i could start in the book and then we could move on so let's go start here and then i can use the papers after so what i'm going to do is i'm going to challenge myself to make a composition out of what i've already created so i'm going to take a piece where i don't like the um i don't like what i came up with if i like what i came up with i'll just stick it in a sketchbook like this piece here i like i'll just stick that in the sketchbook as it is it's a way of reminding myself of what i like and i'll make notes on what's successful this piece i don't like so we'll start with that um now what do i like about it like the way the inks bloomed here but i'm just gonna randomly take a piece it needs to be not too big because we've got only this but make sure when i'm tearing it i'm tearing it in a way where i don't get that edge although you might want that but i don't so i just start gently to see i'm sure there's a technical way of understanding that but i don't know what it is so if i start with this then i have to my challenge is to make something that i like out of something that i didn't like so let's first make it small enough to fit on the page and so i that's why it's important that i don't pick something that i really love if i picked a piece i really love i'm not gonna it's gonna be easy for me to just refine it and make it good i have to pick something that's got no real merit and turn it into something so i'm gluing down that with this is heavy gel gloss because this is quite heavy paint but i find i just find it easier to get it to stick down with that but usually i would use pva or gloss medium for this but it's just a nice it just makes the paper stick so much easier if it was thin paper that was using i would use this just to make sure it wasn't going to be wrinkly but i don't have to really worry with this because it's so thick but that's how you flatten it out and if there's any bits that aren't stuck down i'll just go over them so just using anything that'll scrape now now that these are this bit separate i quite like it so but next thing i'll think is what do i not have here i have a big soft gray shape with a bit of dark and i have lines a bit of thin lines but not that many thin lines so can i bring some thin line into it and can i bring some more solid darken well i've got solid darts here so and i i think it's imp for me in this exercise it's important for me to um tear rather than cut because unless i get to a point where i'm being precise because i want to challenge myself to make something out of it so at the moment that's just all of it there's nothing to it what haven't i got you know i haven't got line i do have some bits of paper with colour on but i want to find some bits of thin line or the other thing is to add them which i'll be showing you shortly so here's a bit with something lying on so i'm just gonna be brutal with it like that's bringing in some darker and it's bringing in some light line which is what i said i wanted so not too much thought just stick it down this is playing i'm not trying to make a painting i'm just trying to learn and understand and i want to challenge myself so that's why it's important do i want to put it that way no that's why it's important that i don't pick too carefully the piece i want to use actually i want to pull i'm going to have the white line on this piece wait wait here it i don't know what that's called where you can see the paper edge i'm going to have it here sometimes i like that in some places and sometimes it interferes with the composition which i don't have a composition at the moment clearly but now where do i want to put i do like this big slab of dark so i could put it up here overlapping that and then where things don't fit together i'm not concerned about that because i can make it off it but in the process of tearing bits up i'm choosing all the time and it's the choosing it's the practicing choosing choosing what you tear choosing what you place i'm not suggesting this is an exercise that would work for everyone but i find it helpful just in kind of you know seeing my own preferences and also guiding myself where i'm going next with the work because all this is it's coming for a reason i just don't know what it is yet and it's all right i don't need to it'll make itself clear or it'll turn out to be a dead end and i'll get involved in something else and this will go um now what i want to do next because i'm liking some parts of this we start bringing this together just get my bits stuck down properly i'm terrible at having dirty hands and then sticking my pieces down and making a mess which even though it's not finished piece i'd like it not to be a mess so i'm just stopping to have a look and see what i think of it i've still got all my color i haven't even used any of my extra collage stuff i'm quite happy with it as it is at the moment i have got these photocopies if i feel that i need something but what i'm feeling like i need at the moment is to put some some link these things together a little bit more so i'm looking for things to do that i have some ink here that's dark so i have some like undiluted ink so i could join those two together i can make that mark continue onto there so this stops hopefully looking like pieces collaged on eventually especially when i flattened it all down uh if i want to bring do i want to bring anything down here and do i want to carry that across i have this which is um a woody pencil i also use neo color crayons for this or charcoal but they're water they're all need fixing because they all you know move around but this gives me the ability to make quite nice thick lines and then what do i like what don't i like what do i feel is missing i'd like a bit more of that blue so i'm looking for it and not finding it at the moment this is the story of my creative life not being able to find what means now i don't want to do the same thing right i want something different with that so i'm gonna draw that marking up there and i'm not sure i like what i've done there so i can always cover that up with something and the great thing about just playing like this is if i don't like something i just get a bit of the white paper i can stick it down black on that and cover up the part i didn't like and but really it's just working out you know some some kind of thing that i can bear to look at i'm going to cover that up again and this stuff this heavy heavy gel gloss it dries uh clear so you can cover things up with it if you don't mind having a bit of your piece being shiny in the end if this was going to be an actual piece i would cover it all with gloss medium anyway to seal it because i like that as a finish lots of people don't that's one piece i'm not going to mess i'm just going to do another one [Music] [Music] so [Music] do [Music] do right so what i'm left with is a really messy desk covered in bits i didn't use a lot of the stuff i pulled out that's fine i've got a lot more of these to do uh what do i think about this one i think it's very busy um i like the blue and black together so that's something i've learned but i think it's too busy and so what i would do next is play with tearing off like bits of white paper and just put it there and see if that makes it better which bit is making it feel too busy or too heavy or and you can this great thing about collage is just go oh actually it's that line that's a problem cover it up no it's this bit here that's a problem cover that up no that's too big so get rid of it or paint over it of course but at the moment i'm just sticking with ink and collage so you can keep testing out that's what i like about it keep and and it's all learning and discovery so that's that one i think this one is the one i like the best um so i have to kind of think about why it's still not as successful as i would like it's still not like what i would say is as successful as i would like is if it makes me say oh i must flatten that out and put it on my website somebody will want that it's not that but i quite like the contrast of what's going on the big dark mark which i had to respond to so i've responded to with a lot of lighter things and then using line as a contrast to that and i quite like this coffee tissue paper and that's bringing in this one i think has got too busy so my my you know i'm often and i might turn them around sometimes so i can see uh what's going on i think that dark and that dark i just it's just all too much i quite liked it when i lightened it up by adding light up there so i could come in now and try adding some lighter areas and i've got like this which is uh my photocopy of my marks a photocopy of a light area which i took for this very reason i printed that one out for this reason because it gives you a chance me not you this is my problem gives me a chance to test things out so i could test out like what happens if i take away that dark shape that i created there or what happens if i take it away in the middle what happens if i take that away now i quite like all that part uh what happens if i come put some light in here i definitely think it benefits from getting light over here so that could be something and then there might be some benefit to some more light over here but you can just keep layering keep layering keep layering on top and it doesn't matter that it's one type of paper over another type it's all going to get sealed in at the end if i ever end up with anything that i want to keep that's one piece on and then where do i want that piece do i want that piece i don't want a larger piece yeah stick it on can i always cover it up with these thinner bits of paper i'll put i'll put a coat of medium over the top before i try and work on it otherwise if i put ink on that it's just copy paper it's just gonna all disintegrate i'm guessing i don't like that blue on there i like to blue on another one but it's too much on there so keep going with my light paper and try and use all the little bits so i don't waste stuff i don't actually take these i don't actually use these compositions in paintings but you know i don't go oh you let me find that and then copy it but i often find that they come in anyway one way or another but it's more at the moment for me about exploring what it is i'm trying to do and why and by just drawing back over that of course now it looks more like part of what i'm making um but what what these shapes keep coming back in this swirl and these lines and i just i'm interested in why and then following that and developing it i already think it's improved from doing that but uh i'm just going to make loads more of these i am going to end up with what i do with these larger ones eventually if i want to keep them is i'll just put make my own sketchbook out of them or i'll stick them into i've got some large sketch books i might stick them into large sketchbooks but sometimes i just use masking tape to make my own book and put a cardboard cover on it and then i've got them in the future if i want to refer back to them no point no need to waste anything that we work on we can always learn something from it so if that looks like fun join me june the third for a free eight day taster course for my full course that i teach every year the taster course is free to everyone and you are very welcome to join even if you have no intention of staying on for the full course it's one week just over a week a year that i get to spend helping everybody to unleash their creativity and learn to play and explore without worry and in the process of playing and exploring you start to discover who you really are what you really like so i hope you come and join me the link is below this video and we start on june the third i know if you're watching this when i first put it out that's the time to wait but hopefully it'd be worth the wait and i'll send you some little things in the meantime when you signed up don't forget to leave me a comment if you enjoyed this and subscribe if you're interested in seeing more it really helps me with youtube so i would love it if you do that take care everybody bye

Channel: Louise Fletcher Art

Views: 105,559

Rating: 4.9535007 out of 5

Keywords: art, artist advice, artist, painting, painting tips, art tips, art inspiration, abstract painting

Id: WnOiDeASnoI

Length: 26min 49sec (1609 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 11 2021