More Pictures from Guilford

Here are a few more pictures from the Scribble Collage workshop at the Guilford Art Center in Guilford, CT:

Sharon's papers:



A demonstration:



Alice applying a second color of paint:

Papers on the lawn:

Doreen's collages:

Diane's collages (I hope she will scan these and post on her blog, so that we can see each piece individually):


Cathy's collages:


Alice's collages (this back-lighting does not do them justice):


Sharon's and Diane's collages:


Mary's collages (Mary LOVES bright colors!):


We did stain tissue papers, but nobody got any pictures of that process. We did use the tissue papers in our collages, though.

I will be teaching Scribble Collage again at Art Unraveled on August 8, and at Art and Soul on September 29. I'm also teaching a shorter version called "Scribble Paint" at Art and Soul on the evening of September 29. Hope you can be there!

Scrribble Collage at Guilford Art Center

I am teaching a two-day Scribble Collage workshop at Guilford Art Center on June 25 and 26th in Guilford, CT. This time I am doing it a little differently. We will spend the first morning making stained tissue papers:


Which are beautifully luminous:


We will make patterns and textures on the stained papers:


And glitz them up with shimmer mists and metallic paints.

We will also paint light weight drawing papers, newspaper, and printed papers to make a big yummy stash of collage materials.




On the second day we will focus on creating collage compositions, working in small series.


I got such a strong response to my "Staining Papers" posts from a few months ago, that I decided to include it in this workshop. In my own work I use a lot of stained tissue paper in conjunction with my painted drawing papers. Thanks for visiting!

Working in Series

I've been corresponding with a friend on the west coast who has recently begun her collage journey. She is gathering materials, reading books and blogs, taking workshops, getting information and inspiration online, and trying to find her own way in paint-collage-mixed media. Like a lot of us, she seems to get stuck in over-thinking each piece, and I find myself saying frequently: make MORE like that! Choose your materials or theme or images or whatever, and then DO LOTS AND LOTS of small pieces. In other words, I am suggesting that working in a series encourages you to break out of the over-thinking and preciousness of individual pieces, and think of it as a longer term process. Does any of this sound familiar? So here is a small example from my own worktable. I decided to explore the idea of using neutral colors - browns, beige, black, off-white, and see what I could come up with in a series of grid-based abstract collages.

The materials I used included these magazine images from National Geographic:
And some of my stained tissue papers, as well as some found text and dress pattern paper:
The collage studies are all approximately 5"x7". These are just that: studies. I have begun an almost daily practice of doing a few of these every day, using collage and paint. It's a simple and approachable format, and keeps my eye in practice.

The papers are cut and torn, and I used acrylic matte medium to adhere them as well as for a top coat.
Even though I thought I would use paint in these studies, I ended up using collage only.
Now they go in my pile of "collage studies", some of which I will continue to work on, and some not.Since I began doing these small studies on a regular basis, I've thought it would be really fun to get together with other artists - in person or in cyberspace - and do a "Collage-Athon", maybe spending a whole day making small collage studies. Or making ten-a-day for a given period of time; or making 100 collages in a given period of time... just a thought kicking around back there. If you have any suggestions around this, please let me know. Thanks for visiting!