Making papers inspired by Free classes

Kellee Wynne has created a Virtual Art Summit featuring 17 talented artists HERE. You can join for no charge but they are accepting donations to help create more programs like this and keep them available to everyone at no cost when they need it most. Last Day to register is April 30th, but Kellee has extended the watch time until May 31st.

Roben-Marie Smith is taking part creating collage papers. Here are some samples before she teaches the lesson.

I decided to work on 2 recycled magazine pages and also a couple of watercolour papers for my Autumn Advent Journal (will turn that into a link when do my last post about that). Because you are just playing you don't have to worry about the final outcome and you can tear into smaller pieces to apply as personal collage in your work. Keep it loose. No judgment. Keep turning your paper for a different perspective. The hardest part was waiting for the paint to dry on a cold day...and the no judgement part when in progress. In fact - taking a photo made me feel better about these papers and I probably could have stopped there.

I think one of my "blocks" was that I was trying to keep the watercolour pages in the right colour-way for my Autumn Journal which is not my usual happy colour place. So then I added some different colours on the pure play paper and felt happier. And then added more stencil marks = much more me. Being reminded of that Autumn palette led to the use of dark brown as a different dark. And then I decided some tissue or teabag transparent collage would be fun. You could just keep going but I'm there for now and feeling happy that I can move forward with these in a number of different ways eg. by adding collage and white pen marks to lighten. These are my finished play magazine papers to tear for collage for future projects:

I can see some really cool pieces that will happen once torn smaller - eg. that bottom left corner of the bottom piece. Scrummy and unexpected colour combo for me.
And I'll link here to show you how these watercolour background  pages for my Autumn Journal turned into spreads. These are pretty messy to be honest, but I'm not worried because I know how to salvage the beauty and cover up what I don't like.

If you enjoy Roben-Marie's lesson she has lots of inspiration on her blog - including her teabag #100DayProject - and also offers 2 FREE Journal workshops : Transitions Journal HERE

and Urban Journal Remix HERE.

I also came across this FREE offering from Jeanne Oliver which I thought would be fun to investigate after playing with Roben-Marie's technique.

Completely not my colour palette but interesting to see ideas of media and mark making tools. Hope this inspires you to have a play too.