BIRDY CARDS!

I needed some handmade cards to send to some special friends, so I produced the pics shown above, and mounted them onto cream card stock. I looked at possible backgrounds in my store of hand painted papers, and came across these black and white ones.  To me, they suggested winter branches and foliage - ideal to perch some collaged birds!

I have started to use a different technique for collage.  It is one advocated by Laura Lein-Svencner.  It takes a bit of preparation, as all the papers have to be coated with Golden polymer gloss medium, and left to dry.  The design is then cut out and arranged onto the background and covered with parchment paper.  To get the design to fuse together, I used heat in the form of an iron, which I keep solely for doing artwork.

A STARTING POINT FOR ABSTRACTS

I find starting completely abstract work daunting, because, unlike realistic or work with a subject matter or theme, there are no references to guide you and it is all about you making decisions - the colours to use, the shapes and lines to create, what composition to aim for etc. I therefore find it helpful to have a starting point which provides some guidelines.

Looking through Seth Apter's book, The Mixed Media Artist, I found this tip from mixed media collage artist, Laura Lein-Svencner - "Using magazines, scissors and a glue stick, I like to give myself assignments in my collage sketchbook.  I start with ten pages torn out of a magazine and make five collages in thirty minutes.  I find that each time I do this, new compositional arrangements make themselves present, which I then use as sketches for larger works."

This tip interested me so I decided to have a go!  I managed four A5 samples - see above.  As I wanted to cover up all the white paper, it did take me 45 minutes...  I was pleased with the results but they did feel a bit busy, so I photocopied them and then cut them into smaller units - see below.

Two of the slightly more complicated samples were cut into smaller units - see the pictures below...

I feel that there is plenty of reference material here for me to create a series of abstracts. I may need to cut the samples up further.  There are pointers for composition, colour and even texture and mark making.  Once I start, things will change, as they always do, but there are some brilliant starting points...