Heart Collage Zoom Workshop Aftermath

 We had a great group last Friday for the Valentine Card Workshop. I'll do it again next February. Here are just a few of the pieces made by participants.

All of these are small, greeting card size. It's a great format for exploring contrasts in color, value, and pattern. How do you make an image lively without making it 'too busy'? Where is the line between visual excitement and visual confusion? How simple can you make an image and still maintain a sense of excitement or mystery? 

Hope you all had a good Valentine's Day!

Re-Imagining: Using Your Own Artwork for Collage

 I recently had a bunch of my paintings, drawings, and sketchbook studies printed by a local printer, to generate new collage material. I always scan my smaller work at high resolution, and my larger works I have professionally photographed, so I have high quality digital images of everything. In Adobe PhotoShop I re-sized some of the images, and then ganged them up on 11"x17" files, ready for the printer. You could do this on your own printer if you have plenty of ink.

Here are a few of the files I sent to the printer:

A few images from my sketchbook

More from the sketchbook, original and re-sized

More from sketchbook with the red pear in several sizes

Here are some paintings and studies ganged up on 11"x17" sheets:

In addition to all this new collage material, I used some found material and began playing. Take a look at this video.

 

 

I found this to be a very freeing way to play with imagery and generate fresh visual ideas.