Mandalas from the De-Stress Workshop

Here are a few, a very few, of the mandalas that participants in my De-Stress with Art workshop shared on our group blog. This is the tip of the iceberg, as it were. SO fun to see all the gorgeous pieces. The project is to make half-mandalas and then play with different combinations.

Check out the fish in this one.

Enjoy! Thanks for visiting.

Make your own Envelopes!

With Lucie Duclos. Lucie just released a new class on SkillShare, which you can find HERE. In it she shows you how to make your own envelope glue, which you can also use on collage papers. Just apply to the back, then after it's dry you can cut and stick collage papers to a surface by licking the pieces as you would a postage stamp. Great for teeny tiny collage pieces. Here are a couple of images from Lucie:

Find the class on SkillShare here: https://skl.sh/2V8okCC

I am working on a class for SkillShare that is an introduction to abstract composition using tissue paper collage. I will keep you posted on its release date.

Sheltering In Place

For those of you who may have some extra time on your hands and could use a little bit of online creative community, I have created a new online workshop called "De-Stress with Art". It is a series of five projects that are designed to help you relax and focus while making beautiful images. You can see the full description here, and sign up if you like.

We'll start with mandalas, as they are soothing to create, and yet they offer a lot of creative possibility. Actually, we make half mandalas, so that we can put them together in unexpected ways.

My inclination was to offer something for free, but at the same time many of my workshops are being cancelled, so my own income for this year is pretty uncertain. My compromise is to offer this class for $100, considerably less than my other online classes. All my YouTube videos are free, so please use those as a resource for your creative endeavors.

Stay healthy! If you can, enjoy the change of pace, though I'm sure that is not possible or easy for many

The Visual Sentence

I have been experimenting with a process of assembling prints (from the gel plate and foam relief plates) into pieces, which reminds me of stringing words together to make sentences. Each print has a few elements - they are not just all-over patterns - and combining them offers a fresh approach to 'composing'. I learned this process from Joyce Silverstone at North Country Studio Workshops last January. See my post about it here. Whereas in a collage, your substrate determines the boundaries of the piece, in 'scrolling' (Joyce's term for the process), you assemble the parts without a substrate and make up the boundaries as you go along.

 

Above are a few pieces that I assembled visually, and then scanned the parts and put them together digitally. These are available as prints and products on Pixels/Fine Art America.

I will be teaching "The Visual Sentence" later this year in Montreal, and next year at Hudson River Valley Art Workshops. Stay tuned to my calendar.

Making hearts is a way to engage in painting or collage without taking it too seriously. How can you agonize over your image when it is the most over-used, cliché of clichés in the realm of shapes?

For this reason I am offering a workshop on mixed media techniques in which we use the heart as the image. It is called Light Hearted, and I'll be offering it along with other workshops at Art and Soul this May in Colorado Springs. Read about it here. See my other workshop here.

In the video I am using Utrecht acrylic matte medium to adhere the collage to the substrate, and also for the top coat. It is my favorite matte medium for collage. The markers are Posca, which are opaque paint markers.

These and other 'light hearted' images are available as prints or on products through Pixels/Fine Art America. Click here for prints and products.

Staining Tissue Paper to use in Collage

Here is a video I just released demonstrating how to make stained tissue paper in small quantities. In 2011 I did a post about staining tissue papers in much larger quantity, taking up a lot of space to make full sheets. Read it here and find some useful links. This video shows a more compact version.

You need palette paper (or use freezer paper); white tissue paper (I use Blick); fluid acrylic paints - transparent colors give you the best results; water, brushes.... I think that's it.

Stone Stack #6,  9x12"

Stone Stack #7, 9x12"

Stone Stack #8, 9x12"

Stone Stack #9, 9x12"

I used the resulting material in the collages above. These are very simple studies in which I am focusing on scale, value, and arrangement of elements.

You can find the pieces available as prints or products here.

Printmaking at North Country Studio Workshops

I try to take one workshop every year, but it did not happen in 2019 because I was saving it up to take a workshop with Joyce Silverstone at North Country Studio Workshops. NCSW offers about a dozen different workshops, all in the same week, every other year, using the fabulous facilities at Bennington College. Bennington in the winter is not exactly a vacation destination, so you get to focus on studio work and commune with artists in all media from all over the place for a solid five days. It is a beautiful place to be in the winter: peaceful, with gorgeous views and no distractions from the art. Joyce is on the faculty at Zea Mays Printmaking in Northampton, MA.

Here are a few photos from my experience at this workshop:

Putting together a few of my black and white prints

Amy carving a test plate

The beehive of a studio

Another student's work up on the wall

Black and white work of several students

One of my assembled pieces, as hypothesis

Another of my hypothetical assemblages

Ditto the above

And another. This is SO FUN to put pieces of prints together in different ways, and then photo graph them. I did actually put one together more or less permanently.

Here are some more (and better) photos on North Country's Instagram feed. Enjoy!

Radical Layering Workshop at Tanque Verde Ranch

Radical Layering is the name I'm giving to a process of collage and sanding, with layers of paint and drawing. You can see my video post here. I taught this workshop for the first time last week at Tanque Verde Ranch in Tucson, organized by Madeline Island School of the Arts. They offer workshops at their home campus on Madeline Island (WI), and in the cooler months in Santa Fe and Tucson.

We had a FABULOUS time! What a great group of women - brave, fun, willing to work way outside their comfort zones. And they made gorgeous, surprising art. The ranch was not so shabby either. It borders the Saguaro National Park East, and offers many hiking/riding trails on its own property, as well as great food, two swimming pools and hot tubs (indoors and outdoors), beautiful views, a spa....

Here is a peek at some of the work we made (there is more on Facebook!), along with a few images of the workshop and the environment. Enjoy!

Demo piece, 11"x14"

Demon piece, 11"x14"

Using the brayer to lift paint

The dining room building at dusk, photo by Shelly Campbell

 

Eileen taking a walk, photo by Shelly Campbell

Sanding on terrace just outside our classroom, photo by Shelly Campbell

Demonstrating the sanding process, photo by Shelly Campbell

Student work in progress, 11"x14"

Student work, maybe in progress, maybe finished, 11"x14"

Student work, in progress or finished, 11"x14"

Student work, 10"x10" approx

Student work, 10"x10" approx

Student work, texture detail

Student work, 14"x11"

Student work, 10"x10" approx

Thanks for visiting. I will be back at Tanque Verde Ranch in January 2021, and also January 2022. Check MISA's website and my calendar updates.

Amy Stockwell's New Website

Amy has taken quite a few workshops with me over the last ten or so years, and we have taken a few workshops together, notably at North Country Studio Workshops. I have always been a big fan of her work, so I am delighted that Amy now has a web site!

Check it out here, where you can learn more about Amy. Meanwhile, here is a little eye candy. The following are all from Amy's "Patterns of Entanglement" series, each is 15"x11" on paper. See them on her web site for more details.

 Thanks for visiting!!