I love doing small collages in my art journals. As I’ve said before, it’s a great way to uncover my current interests and reinforce the things that make my art mine.
My favourite journal for small collage is the Hahnemühle D&S sketch – it’s 14x14cm, 140gsm and there’s 160 pages. I stock up whenever they’re on sale!
I’ve completed a journal tonight and stated another. I have a small container of hand painted papers and gelli prints, scissors and glue on a tv dinner table in the lounge. I collage while Alan and I watch TV. Below are the last few I’ve done – night shots on my phone so not 100% accurate.
Sometimes I see people online asking what the point of collage is if you’re “not going to do anything with it”.
For many creatives the joy is in creating, rather than the final result. Moving our hands, and quieting our brains, is good for us and even more important when the world feels difficult.
I believe the hand of the artist always shows. Creating collages without too much thinking helps uncover developing interests, common threads, new directions and shapes that are calling to us.
I made four small collages this afternoon – I think the journal is 6×6”. When I look at them it’s obvious to me one was overly influenced by some printed tissue paper that was lying around. The hand painted papers feel right by the composition doesn’t sit comfortably for me.
The other three sit together, and show the hand of the artist. There are consistent shapes which regularly show up in my work, mixed with a shape that’s still emerging, and some colour schemes I’ve been exploring.
Will I do anything with this information? In a formal sense, no. But it’ll sit in the back of my mind and over time some of it may become part of my new art language. We’ll see…
I’m an artist, and also a crafter – for me there’s considerable overlap between the two. What I learn from crafting informs my art, and vice versa. With both, there are times when I need to stretch myself a bit, because it’s easy to get too comfortable.
Last week was a LOT. Monday night I was at A&E with my best friend until after 3am. Alan and I had a couple of disturbed nights for no obvious reason. Thursday and Friday I was dealing with a weather event at work, with my emergency management hat on. By the end of the week I was shattered.
Saturday I took Tony out for brunch, and have spent the rest of the weekend puddling round, doing art and craft. I’ve been stamping out lots of Dina Wakley stamps onto tissue then cutting them out while we watch tv in the evening.
I have been working on a collab Penny and I are doing. It’s a 9m x 19cm roll of Awagami washi paper. It’s fun to work on, and the paper is surprisingly strong, but hard to handle because of the length. It’s currently hanging over my art room door to dry,
While Alan was away I had painted a deer standing in the bush on a 12×12 panel. Very definitely not my usual style and I said at the time I’d rather stab myself in the eye with a fork than do another one. It was a gift made with love.
Never say never! I decided to do another deer, this time on a full size (50x75cm?) sheet of pastel paper. Why am I doing it? Because it stretches me artistically and makes me think differently. It’s good for my art practice to do something that is well outside my usual wheelhouse.
Progress on a larger scale deerWorking on a 9m washi roll collab with PennyThe joy of sitting quietly cutting things out
Yesterday I blogged about six small pieces I was working on that were awkward and wrong. I described that base layer is an invitation to play. What I didn’t say is, and I have nothing to lose.
Tonight I grabbed collage paper scraps, glue, acrylic paint and followed my instincts. Not thinking, only doing. Are these finished, or good yet? No. But they’re better, and I think I’m going to like the final results. Sometimes having nothing to lose is a bonus.
I’ve been an inconsistent blogger lately. Life seems a bit fragmented and busy. It’s not bad, just different, for all kinds of reasons.
I’m still doing #100TinyTreasures and have been posting on Bluesky and Facebook, but not here, so it’s catch up time. An impact on any project that inspires consistent practice is, for me anyway, that it reinforces and solidifies the hand of the artist. What marks and shapes do I go back to time after time? What formats and focal areas speak most clearly to me?
At the weekend I taught a gelli printing class with four artists. They each had an identical pack of papers, access to the same paints, stencils and tools. At the end of two and a half hours there were four completely different sets of gelli prints. The hand of the artist always shows…
Cath Sheard Art 