Mixed Media Collage - Part 1

hey everyone welcome to mais lesson so you know the last couple of months we've done some pretty major projects and paintings and I've had a several requests for you guys or from you guys to see me create in my studio work sketchbook which I have been doing and I am loving so I thought I would create a sketchbook page with you guys and one of the kind of prompts in this month was about illustrating or creating a page dedicated to your vision of your creative fire your inner creative fire which we talked about this month at length and so I thought I'd be fun to do instead of like a full-on oil painting or charcoal portrait or whatever I thought it'd be fun to do a mixed-media collage in our sketchbook because I think the sketchbook is such a great place to explore your mediums and play around with different elements and I believe collage is one of the most powerful ways to understand composition because simply because you can move elements around and really focus on arrangement and balance and focal point and all of those different principles of composition so I thought it'd be fun to just see what happens and I mean whenever I kind of create like this it's in my sketchbook or especially when I'm doing mixed-media collage I don't necessarily know each and every step that's gonna happen as you guys can probably relate to art often kind of unfolds and evolves as you go along the process so I've got a couple of things here I know that I'm going to use one of my favorite vintage models Evelyn Nesbit as my muse of course I could draw her but like I said I wanted to kind of go down the road of collage with you guys and maybe do some image transfers and so I've got a pile of like ephemera and things that I might use some napkins I may or may not use all these things we'll see what happens but I think the most important thing to think of when you are doing a page like this is a have a clear kind of theme or concept so like I said we're doing the inner creative fire is the theme for the page we have our color palette so we know it's going to be in Red's with touches of that of the gray and the darker blue so that's all settled which is great starting off with the color palette always helps I think making a cohesive page and then you know be really open to kind of letting this piece unfold and adding different elements in and taking things away and that's what I love about collage is that you could physically move things around and see how they work and see how they interact and kind of construct the piece in such a way that it comes about sort of in this organic in this organic sense so I think the first thing I'd like to show you is the way I like to do image transfers and as many of you know image transfers don't always work out so you have to be open to that sometimes they really screw up and sometimes they look amazing so a lot of times I'll print out a few of the pieces that I'm trying to transfer just in case one screws up I can kind of move on and try it again I like to use the liquid Tex matte gel as my transfer medium you can use lots of different things some people use you know matte medium fluid people may use the golden brand as opposed to look as opposed to liquid Tex but I found that this works pretty well for me and also the thing you also want to keep in mind is that you want to print your image out in reverse so even though that this portrait works either way I did flip this on my computer and printed it out on my laser printer and I've you know so it's a reverse image so when I transfer her it will look like the original photo because I'm working in my sketchbook and if you guys do this project in your sketchbook you don't have to worry too much about copyright images and all that sort of thing a lot of these vintage images are not copyrighted righted so that's that's helpful this is not a piece that I would sell or anything like that it's just something fun to do in my in sketchbook so I'm gonna go ahead and get started I'm gonna open up my gel medium and I like to use kind of an older brush that's not too too good because a lot of times if you leave any of this medium on your brush it totally ruins it and then I'm gonna just do a light coat on her a light even coat I'm gonna make sure we get good coverage over the face because that's obviously what we're aiming to transfer the most the hair and all that I can always improvise and then I'll just get her pick her up put her down where I want her and then go ahead and take a credit card this is a little bit bumpy this credit card but let's use this side and just kind of get her down and a lot of times I'll just use my thumb and just burnish the image focusing on obviously the face because I want to make sure that that transfers any bubbles of air kind of push those out if you can you don't want to be too forceful you don't want to rip the paper but you do want to try and get rid of the bubbles because that will affect the transfer and people have a lot of different techniques of doing this so this doesn't work for you there's other ways to you know do it but a lot of times it's just a little bit of trial and error and a little bit of practice kind of getting the feel for it and then I'll just start to peel that backing so I haven't let it dry totally or anything like that but I'm just going to go ahead and peel gently you can see we get that first layer off and if you lose a little bit like down here I don't worry about that I think it looks kind of cool but getting this first layer off is helpful you have to kind of be gentle here because obviously if I dig too hard I'm going to rip off parts that I don't want to rip off you definitely want to be careful around the head in the face see it's always fun to do this on camera and you just pray that it works you know we'll see and again if you lose edges don't worry too much about that this bits being a bit stubborn now if this freaks you out too much ripping off this layer you can just let it all dry and then rub away the paper I just find that this gets you to the destination a little faster because you're getting rid of one of those big layers of paper sometimes you just can't quite get it to come up so I'll just leave that bit so go ahead and make sure you put your brush that you just had and all that not medium into water otherwise it will become destroyed and then I'm going to go ahead and dry this now and you'll know it's dry when it's like cool to the touch I'm not cool to the touch when it's not cool to the touch and then you know it's dry so then the next step is to get some water and I'm gonna go not actually I'll just use this just wet your fingertips and start to rub away all the paper now this is a process it takes a little while and you have to be patient because if you get a little too rough you're going to destroy your transfer and so this is where I think people maybe go a little too heavy-handed and they scrape the whole thing off so this takes a little patience and excuse my very chips nail polish I always usually like to get my nails done for you guys since you're going to be staring at my hands but I didn't have time today to go do that so I'm sure you don't care I'm just you know got my standards um anyway just keep rubbing so you can see I'm just wetting my fingertips I'm not like saturating it to the point where it's like a wet mess it's just enough to get that paper activated so you can roll it away and I have to be careful like in these areas where there's already some holes I have to be careful not to push it too hard but like I said I kind of like those aspects I like the little the distressed elements that happen when you do an image transfer it definitely can't be after like perfection and I'm rarely after perfection so that's good but if you're one of those people that gets really stressed out about this kind of thing then just take it slow put on some music just be gentle with it and just take it slow and you know what if it doesn't work you can just try again or you can just stick the paper down and not do an image transfer which can be just as beautiful I just figured I should show this technique because it's kind of fun when ii know many people have done this before but if it's new to you i highly recommend trying it because it's really kind of a fun way to add something into your sketchbook and it's a little bit a little different than just gluing it down it has a different look to it i use a laser printer I've used inkjet before do some experiments at home if you have an inkjet try it out on some you know blank pieces of paper or some scrap paper and see how what kind of effects that you get sometimes with inkjet you'll have to fix the image first with like a spray fix so that that doesn't run but other times people have done inkjet transfers without doing that and it's seen to be okay so it can be temperamental it depends on your paper it depends on your printer there's kind of some variables so do a little test run and see what works for you and I recommend that with like everything in art if you have questions if you're wondering like would that work try it you know never never hesitate to follow your curiosity and experiment because it's such a great way to discover new ways of using her equipment say I'm losing some of the corner here not that worried about it though because I don't really care about that part I'm probably going to paint over it obviously the most important part here is for the face so you can see this gets kind of messy so just be prepared for some paper mess but she's starting to come through here you if you kind of want to check your progress like if you can see that it's getting pretty thin and feel like you're getting down to that last stage go ahead and dry it and then you'll be able to see the paper will turn white again and you'll be able to see where you still need to rub away so I can keep now I am using especially at this stage pretty minimal pressure it's more about just moving the my finger across the surface with that water on it so I'm not I'm really being gentle because as you get close to the image obviously it gets a little bit more precarious and you don't want to rub it all away so just kind of be mindful of that you also don't want to get the paper too wet at this stage because for that same reason it's getting quite delicate and if you push too hard and get it too sloppy and wet it'll just slide or slide off obviously I'm being more careful around the face and I want to just fake just say this because I know that I've seen different opinions about collage and painting over collage and all these sorts of things and in my opinion I don't think that one type of art is lesser than another kind of art I just I just don't they require different skills they require different ways of seeing they require different techniques but if art is an expression from you and in whatever way you make it then I believe it's valid so if you do a collage and people you get kind of that kickback of people saying oh well yeah anyone can do collage or you're just sticking on things that are not yours or whatever which I have heard myself please ignore that because collage is in fact a fine art it is considered a fine art and it isn't lesser than anything else so I'm just gonna let you guys know my opinion about that because I get you know I've had students you know been very hurt by a people's comments about collage or even painting over collage or whatever and I just think it's really awful when that happens and when people get attacked there they're sharing their art and they get attacked for it so I'm pretty strong about that it's just you know we don't need any help being mean tweets ourselves right I mean our inner critics are always working overtime and we don't need other people telling us what art is and what it isn't and what the rules are because there are no rules and aside from like copying someone's art exactly and putting your name on it and selling it like that's not cool but and using copyrighted images and stuff like that of course you have to respect that but don't ever think that collage is less than painting or photography is less than drawing or whatever they're all it's all art and it's not about one being more valuable or more defined than the next you know again I mean if you guys are in the live talk when I talked about criticism you know if someone makes a comment like oh you know collage is this not they probably don't know that much about collage because collage has a history that goes back quite a ways it's a lot of it started with well really I mean Picasso and Georges Braque started playing around with collage and then 1900s and so it has a full-on history and it is a beautiful art style and art a way of making art and actually has a fascinating history if you want to look into it it's pretty cool I think it's always good to put things in context and look back at history and see where things fall and you guys know I geek out about that kind of stuff [Music] what I'm ultimately saying is don't let anyone take away your joy however you make your art don't let anyone steal that from you you know because they have limiting beliefs about what art is that's all I'll say and I gotta say you know a lot of the worst critics out there are not the ones actually making art you know it's kind of ironic kind of interesting this is getting pretty close to being done I have to be careful I don't get carried away while I'm chatting with you I'm trying reduce some of this around here although I'm not going to stress about it too much because I'll probably paint over a lot of this and I love I mean collage I think collage is really was my gateway back to art you know as many of you guys know I went to art school and you know got my degree in illustration and then came out art school and promptly didn't make any art for 10 years and so when I started doing art again collage was approachable to me it seemed it felt safe it felt like a place where I could go and play and not be too critical of of my work and I think collage is probably a gateway for a lot of people and it's such a beautiful gateway at that so yeah she's looking pretty good I'll probably try this again and kind of see where I'm at there's quite a bit of paper still on this corner but I think what happened here is that there may be some gel medium that also got on there so it's kind of sealing it so I can't rub it away and if that happens you know don't worry about it just keep going it typically happens on the edges and stuff not not on the face ideally also if you start to see some ink sort of bleed and especially here using a inkjet try try not to rub too hard and rubble but the pigment away you I'm down to the wire here so I have to be really delicate I'm kind of tapping off some of the water so it's my hands are just damp now I will tell you that when you put the matte medium over this it will turn some of these remnants of paper clear which is good news for us all right I think that's probably as much as I want to push it I'm gonna make sure it's really clean get rid of those it's a paper and then I'm gonna go ahead and do a coat of matte medium on top and that's going to seal it so that is good and dry now I've got all this paper mess around me so I'm going to clean that up so it doesn't get in the rest of my work and then move on all right so here's our girl digging her she looks good we got our face really well transferred the edges here I'm totally fine with because a they're kind of cool it looks like they're they've been burned B I'm probably gonna paint over them so I'm not too worried so the next part is to decide like what other elements I want to include you know am I going to have pieces of of collage papers am I gonna incorporate some you know flowers and things so this is kind of the part where you start playing around with different elements and seeing kind of where you want to take it I'll probably bring paint in kind of last so I'm going to separate this napkin if you've got if you guys want to use napkins in your collage make sure you take away like get it down to the very first ply most napkins are about three ply so make sure you you separate the play otherwise when you go to like glue them down stuff starts coming up and it's super annoying and I don't know if I'm gonna use this but let's get it ready just in case see how I can take it away all that all the different layers I'm gonna get it down to the very last layer which is this layer here let me throw all this out although if you like texture you can keep this kind of stuff and glue it on to you know boards and canvases and go gesso over it makes really cool chest texture so you can recycle that if you want to now I do quite like some of these red flowers so maybe I'll cut a few out and see if I end up wanting to incorporate them I don't know I love the transparent look of napkins in collage obviously because they're so thin they have a transparency and once you glue them down which is really kind of lovely and of course they're red in our theme for the month and just remember to I think people also might forget this but you anything you stick down you can customize right so if I stick down this red flower but I want it to be more red I can use paint to enhance that or I can use oil pastel or chuck pastel or pens or markers you know so you can always customize the things that you choose to collage so don't ever feel you know stuck you know stuck with what you have you can change it by using your pinks and other materials and that's what's so fun about being a mixed-media artist right you get to change things up if we want to and I never typically plan out a whole collage I allow the pieces to communicate with each other and then I go from there so I don't you know I'm laying things down just to kind of lay them somewhere safe but I'm not really planning anything right now I'm just kind of playing I'm just gathering elements to play with I wanted to took a class with Orly Ivan airy I don't know if I'm saying that right I hope I am and she's she does a lot of collage work and she said each piece directs the next piece and I think that's really really true and it was so nice hearing that because I'd always collage that way but I didn't ever like say it that way so eloquently so I think that's really important to listen to now if you're the type of person who really wants to plan it out that's totally fine obviously like I said there's no rules but it is nice allowing a piece to just evolve and allowing each decision to inform the next and I definitely see that when I paint too I think I do want to create like a circle around your head I've been doing that a lot lately and I'm enjoying that element I think it especially when you're doing a sort of centered piece like this I think it adds a nice kind of balance so I thought I need to go like find a bowl or something but I forget that I have these circular one of my favorite artists Alphonse mukha did a lot of circles and his work around his the heads of his work the portraits and I've always enjoyed that element to his work something about just adding a circle that kind of adds to me sort of this spiritual sort of halo effect which i think is really interesting as well something that speaks to me when I think about my my fire my inner fire and really old papers here so I'm just kind of playing and seeing where I want to put things if I want to use these things how I want to use them kind of like the idea of creating some some you know finishing her off a little bit maybe with some ephemera yeah like that all right so that's about as much planning as I do I'll like put some pieces down and see if I like them and then if it I tend to just try and be intuitive about it so if I get the feeling of like yeah I like that I just go with it I try not to question it too much because a I can always change it later I can paint over it if I really hate these pieces of paper later I don't have to be married to them so I try and trust my instinct to just get it down I think sometimes we question ourselves too much and then it stops us from moving forward right and that's another thing I think is so great about collage I think it's such a great exercise in trust in like learning to be like yes I like that I'm sticking it down like make that decision you know not hesitate and just go for it and I think learning to trust ourselves is so so important in art making you know we've had definitely a number of people talk about that they've been taking a lot of classes and they've been following tutorials and then when they go to make their own art sometimes that can be tricky and I think that's the really that's well I mean a that can come from you know just being new at art but be I think it can come from just a lack of trust in yourself so that you're scared to make a decision because you're worried you're going to get it wrong anytime you use vintage papers that have like red lines and them like old ledger books or whatever you'll find that that red really comes through and it can be a good thing and sometimes a not-so-good thing it just depends on what you're going to be doing but you see it kind of smudges so hopefully by sealing it and kind of wiping away some of that extra paint or ink pigment sealing it with the matte medium will help keep it from coming up in all my layers because I've had that happen before it's like you didn't really want things to turn pink and then all of a sudden that's what's happening so I like that I did have a moth around here that I was kind of digging I'm quite partial to moths I know it's not super original but I just always enjoy them in pieces of artwork I love the idea of him being like this fire moth and that's representing my inner flame my creative flame so he might come in a little later [Applause] again I'm just playing now trying to see how I like certain elements if I like them if I don't like them I like the idea of these leaves coming around and supporting the circle this is another thing that I'll do I'll sometimes go ahead and lay down what I want to glue and then if I need to cut away areas like if I want this to fit around her head I'll just kind of make a template and then cut away what I don't want roughly it's kind of hard to do on a napkin but now this is where you can sort of you know add in some of the other elements and see if it's going to work because you do you are thinking about composition now so you've got to think about you know how am I going to balance all these different elements okay I like that and again this may not you know I may end up painting over this who knows but for now I kind of like it and so what I've done here in terms of composition is I've grounded her with these papers so instead of her kind of floating and not being grounded in the space this serves as kind of a visual grounding a connection and then up here with this element if we add this guy in we're kind of creating some balance this this weight now is starting to be balanced up here and we'll probably be adding in other things yeah okay so okay I'm gonna go ahead now this is tricky with collage and napkins they're really really thin they're very delicate and so you need to kind of be aware of that and I almost want to like fold this where that seam is in my sketchbook maybe fold that too so I can just trim it I like the construction elements to collage sometimes it feels almost like I'm working with fabric or I'm designing I don't know like a costume for my characters or my whenever I use a figure or a face and I really like that even though I'm not a fashion girl or I have no experience with textiles there's something about it that appeals to me I almost need to cut this away it's like a puzzle you know like fitting different pieces together and you know obviously collage doesn't always have to be like that it can be very layered and you know you can stick things on top of on top of things but sometimes I like fitting things together too satisfying for me yeah so let's get that down and that circle even if that circle ends up kind of disappearing a little bit it's providing some structure for me something to work around this is the tricky bit so I've found that the best way to get pelage to stick about ripping it is to tap so kind of tap it I put I don't know if I put glue over here did I so kind of tap it down like this gently make sure you don't have glue on your fingers because then you can also rip it up okay so here of course again I'm playing with some placement you know where do I want another element of this flower another aspect of composition is repetition so if I use a flower like this I'm not going to use it just in one place I'm probably going to use it you know in maybe three to five places so that the eye has something to connect it to I think I like that there I always worked big to small so if you are you know obviously I stuck down my girl first my focal point and then work out from there so you know the main focal point then some structure than other elements I wouldn't stick down something really small to start out with because again you're building you're building a composition so you want to have some foundation first which would be your focal point or the bigger pieces in your in your in your collage so that's looking kind of cool now this is also creating some movements so that we're connecting things and that's really important as well when you're creating composition because you're really you're directing the eye right so I think I'm going to put that third one right there with the petals pointing down connecting it to this section here okay so now we have some pretty big foundation areas established I've got our girl we've got our base here we have something going on up here no this is probably where I'm gonna use some paint I think I don't think I want any other elements do I I may add other elements later but I feel like I have enough to work with to paint out some areas and bring in some color and see where that takes us alrighty guys I'm gonna clear away some of this I'll put away my glue for right now coming back to it oh no that's not true I'm not gonna put away the glue yet I'm going to dry this and then I'm gonna cover everything in matte medium so hold on so you want to really make sure that your your collage is quite dry before especially with the napkin you don't want to glue the top that deck napkin down and then while it's still wet go over the top because you'll swipe it away I've seen people do that and everyone gets super annoyed when that happens so now that it's dry I can gently and I mean gently go over it with my my glue and if there's wrinkles don't worry about that it's kind of part of napkins they wrinkle chalk it up to texture and I'm going to go over this also it really kind of binds it to and seals it to the paper so that when I go over it with paints and whatnot it won't be affected nor nor will it be ripped up because you know as you can imagine a wet napkin with media on it is going to be pretty delicate I am using Matt for this you can use gloss if you love gloss but I would recommend gloss at the end if you really want a glossy finish and you could do gloss right over the matte and still get a gloss finish it's just sometimes gloss mediums can I have found resist a certain other mediums so just keep that in mind and I know I already went over this paper but I'm just going to go over it again and also remember that collage can be an awesome way to design a painting so you know even though you know I collage this girl on and I collage the flowers on now that I have this composition going I could you know take this to canvas so take this to a board and recreate it redraw it now that I have a design going so sometimes a collage can be a blueprint for another piece which i think is really exciting if your paper is buckling a little bit like mine is trying to worry about it you can always flatten things out I believe that this sketchbook actually is mixed media paper so it's a little less I usually work with the watercolor paper so it's it buckles a little more but I can always flatten it later alright so next steps you know what I think I'm a glue this guy down because I do want to paint on him no I'll wait [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Ivy Newport

Views: 210,377

Keywords: painting, art lesson, donna downey, mixed media art, mixed media art tutorial, mixed media collage art tutorial, makoccino, tamara laporte, willowing, artistNetwork, karen campbell, Teela Cunningham, Kirsty Partridge Art, Flora Bowley, abstract painting techniques, abstract acrylic painting, abstract painting tutorial, abstract painting ideas, Rinske Douna, Sandra Dürr, abstract painting, mixed media collage, mixed media painting, mixed media collage painting

Id: 1nIjWBz-d1Q

Length: 46min 2sec (2762 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 24 2020