Artist Inspired: Organic Mixed Media Collage Inspired by Henri Matisse

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Elizabeth. Thanks for joining me in part of my artist inspired class series. In this class, we are going to be taking a look at the later work of Fav artist Henri Matis. Mattis was a fav painter, so exploring the wild expressive natures of color in the very early 1900s, but as he matured through our artistic practice and was kind of overcoming some different difficulties that he was having in being able to physically do his art, he would glean on scissors as a means to draw with them, to cut out different shapes, to continue to explore what he loved about the creative process and to continue creating in the later years of his life. So he would paint the papers with these bold fun colors and then cut them out to create really dynamic, exciting collages. We're going to take a little bit of a more contemporary approach to that. So we're going to be using construction paper. But in a bonus lesson, definitely check out some ways that I created my own painted paper. And the fun about doing that is you are in complete control of the colors that you create. So you can go wild to mix all of the different subtleties between the colors that are available in construction paper. So then we're going to collect our papers, kind of come up with our color schemes, cut out some amazing shapes in different ways that we can manipulate the paper to create fun dynamic pieces to choose from. Then we're going to be composing those together to make a really beautiful collage, and then you'll have the option to go back in with any kind of mixed media materials that you want to to add patterns and textures and values and lines and shapes and to really bring your collages to life and kind of elevate them beyond the basics of cutting and pasting. This class is intended for creatives of all skill levels who want to look to the artists of the past, in particular, Matis, explore ways that you can incorporate collage and mixed media art making into your artistic practice. And kind of really simplify things down to basic colors and shapes and then elevate it back up by layering those into beautiful compositions that you can then take even further with mixed media details. I hope you'll join me in class as we explore the later works of Henri Matisse and create our own mixed media collage abstract shape inspired projects. See you in class. 2. Class Project: For our class project, we are first going to look at some of the later works by Here Matis. So you can check this out by Googling him and Googling Henri Mattis collage, if you want to on the Internet, but I've also created some resources over on the Projects and Resources tab of class that share some of his dynamic collages and a little bit about his process and background with you. So it takes some time to get inspired by the visuals of Henri Matis. Then we are going to create our own cut paper collage. So we are really looking at using the scissors to draw and create really interesting dynamic shapes in a variety of colors. I really encourage you to push yourself with your color exploration and maybe look at some color combinations that aren't ones that you naturally gravitate towards and kind of see if stepping outside your color comfort zone helps you then push your art project a little further. Free also to explore color combinations that you love, but this is a way you can challenge yourself to take the project further. Now that we're all excited about the work of Mattis and the idea of creating our own inspired piece, let's head it over to the next lesson to talk more about what materials you're going to want to have on hand for class. See you there. 3. Materials: For our Mattis project, the materials are relatively simple. I have an array of different colors of construction paper, and then I've got scissors and glue stick. We're going to be doing collage and they're going to be working back into that. For my background, I'm going to work into white or black. You could really choose any color you wanted to. You could work into a color background. I love the contrast of color on white and color on black because it really changes it to have those different foundations that you're building your geometric or organic collages up from. So I'm going to be showing you how to do it on white and plaque because it's really a different kind of play that goes into it. Then to work back into our collages after we've created them and drawn with our scissors and really gotten some interesting shapes to our papers and built those up into some really dynamic compositions, I'm going to work back in with colored pencil as well as some pasca paint pens. Maybe some other pens I have around. I've got some metallic Sharpies and a gold fine lin I might use, I might grab just a regular black Sharpie. The sky is the limit as far as how you want to work back into your Mattis inspired collages. But this is my go to as far as the mixed media portion of our project. Whatever colors speak to you, you can look at the color schemes on the reference images, on the projects and resources section of class for the different colors that Matis like to use. Or you can go with whatever colors speak to you or have a different mood. We're going to be working abstractly, but you can allude to things. Matis's collages often included figures or some elements that looked a little bit organic elements from nature. You can definitely lean towards representational a little bit also. It doesn't have to be strictly abstract. It can also be a weave of the two. Then this is for our base project, but Matis painted his papers and then cut them up. So in a bonus lesson, I'm going to show you how we can do that, too. And then the benefit of that is that we can go beyond the colors available in construction paper, and we can really have some fun making new and more nuanced colors and even play with the texture of the painted surface as well. The first imitration is going to show you how to do this project with construction paper, and then there will be a bonus one showing you how to create your painted papers, as well as how to apply those for that variation on the project. So gather up your colorful papers, get your glue and your scissors, get your drawing materials ready. Get your background paper cut and figured out. I'll meet you in the next lesson, we'll begin drawing with scissors to create our collage shapes. See you soon. 4. Cut Collage Papers: So as we get started on our class project and wanted to take some time to kind of look back at some of the other examples that I created, some of these came out of some scrap papers that I then modified, so I have some interesting ways things are cut out, and then some I created. It started with a foundation of primary colors. So the dominant colors here are red, yellow, and blue. And then I wanted to kind of mix that up and add in some of the secondaries, too. And then really kind of thinking about the ways that we can use curve shapes and geometric shapes and then how we can position those to make them interesting. You can curate your color selection for your shapes at any point in time. I'm just going to kind of start cutting out some really interesting shapes and then get inspired from those, but you could also sketch this all out in advance and then create the collage pieces that you need. There's really no wrong way to go about it. I like the play of getting inspired by the materials as the materials get modified. So that's why I'm going to approach this one. As we look at the black one, this one has a much more limited color story. I mean, the green is dominant. It's like everything is shades of green, two shades of green. And then I've got warm colors. So my orange, my red, my yellow, and my pink. And really kind of playing between the idea of these geometric ones with the triangles against the rounded organic forms and then the circles. And really playing with the idea of scale, three different sizes for the circles, but also repetition by having the balance of three circles with three triangles. There's a lot of threes happening in this piece in a lot of differentays. The pink pieces. Even the idea that I've got three pieces of this screen, three pieces of this screen, three pieces of pink, three circles between the three there. And then the only shapes that aren't repeated as far as threes go are these two, but this one could be alluding to it down at the bottom. So that was completely unintentional. That just happened. I find the more that I play with abstract work and collage in particular, I'm finding that my background in art and the elements and principles are really impacting that. As you consider how to compose your piece, I'm going to include a resource on the projects and resources section of class that covers what are the elements of art and the principles of design for anyone who wants to be a little bit more intentionally considered of those rather than letting it happen naturally as you follow your own aesthetic guide. So let's create some shapes out of our paper. I like to have a mix of geometric and organic and I like to just have a lot of variety. So I'm going to play around with just cutting and seeing what happens there. I'm also working on a pretty small piece of paper compared to my original pieces. So I really want to keep that in mind. But anytime that something, you know, bumps the edge or goes off, you know, goes off the page, that's great, too, because then it's leading the eye beyond that. Now, the more you cut into your paper, the more interesting shapes you're going to find, you can lean into that, or you can let it you know, just kind of go. That's kind of cool. Maybe some other time. I'll explore that. And again, we're not going to use all the shapes that we create if you're doing this in a way that doesn't have you planning out your shapes in advance. So I'm really just kind of having fun here and cutting things out. You know, I feel like I have enough yellow. If you're gonna play with repetition, you know, we can always circle back and create more of these types of shapes. And always save your scraps because there's lots of other ways we can include those in our art making practice. You'll be surprised at what new life comes out of, you know, pieces of material that, you know, pop back up now and again in your creative process. Now, if I find that I have shapes that are kind of big, I might decide to keep those and just get a bigger background paper. Because there's no one telling me I have to work small. I just kind of like that idea these days because time is limited, and I'm trying to find a way to create in those in between moments. I also want to make sure that I have big pieces and small pieces, 'cause I want to have that size variation to add some interest there. So I'm gonna go ahead and get some more variation going. And then I can also, like, keep changing these shapes as I go. You know, as I start collaging, I might find that I need some other kind of shape, and then I can always edit and kind of refine my shapes throughout the process. And because we're drawing with scissors, you don't have to worry about any of this being very perfect. Kind of embracing the funkiness that happens when we're cutting out shapes. I think I want to have pops some options for pops of blue. I'm going to get my bigger scraps off to the side to save those for future somethings. I'm gonna let these get all sorts of mixed up. And then we're gonna head on over to the next lesson to start composing our colleges. I'll see you there. 5. Collage: So now I'm going to start my Mattis inspired collage. So I have a bunch of different pieces of construction paper. I have a bunch of different pieces of construction paper that I've cut out in shapes that are merged between the ways that he used cut paper, as well as my own preferences when it comes to that. And I'm going to create this one on black background. So I'm going to play around and kind of build up my composition as I go. And I'm going to kind of see how I want this to work. So you can kind of play around with it any way you want to. So you can really kind of plan out your whole composition ahead of time, then glue it together and kind of reassemble it. It's also really fun to just play around and kind of glue as you go. So I'm going to do a little bit of both, and I might find that I need to make some more scraps if I don't have everything that I'm kind of wishing that I had. Although we're trying to get inspired by the pieces of paper that we've intentionally created for this, we can always find as we're creating our designs that we need more. So maybe I'm going to want more of these green pieces. I'm not sure yet. I'm also not sure quite exactly how many colors I'm going to incorporate into this. I do normally really like playing with overlap and kind of building up that layering effect. But a lot of Matis's pieces play between the bold collage elements and the white background. So I really kind of want to give space for space. So I want to let that go in there as I'm trying to challenge myself artistically and explore this in a way that isn't necessarily my normal tendencies. I want to load it up and fill it and Matis lets it breathe. So I'm going to take a cue from Matis, and I'm going to try to let it breathe. I also might find that I'm working because I'm working smaller, that I need a little bit more room for this. But I also want to kind of let that also be a constraint. I want to limit myself to what I've got, for the most part. I want to play with his idea of letting the negative space in the background show through and become part of the composition. And I chose to work small for this, so I want to kind of continue to do that. So the idea is, how can I continue to do that in a way that makes sense? So using those limitations is a really great way to kind of shake things up for yourself artistically. I mean, really often in art, the sky's the limit. We can really go to town and really do anything we want to, and we often have too many options, and then things get a little overwhelming. So by putting in some limitations, I'm helping myself not get overwhelmed with things. Like, this is pretty basic, but this is pretty great. I love this. I do kind of want to I've got some greens. I've got two different blues, which is a little weird. It's not weird. It's making me wonder if I should match my blues up a little bit. I kind of play with, you know, what happens if I take this piece out and I put something else in. So there's limitations that help move you forward creatively, and there's limitations that can stunt your creative growth. So you have to kind of play around with that and kind of figure out what's the fine line there between that. Having those two blues overlap is kind of fun. I kind of like that. So maybe I'm going to do a teeny bit of that. Maybe that blue is what is on the top layer, even though I said I wasn't going to layer. The hard part about building it up like this without gluing it down as you go is that I'm committed now. I mean, I'm not committed now. The problem is there's no commitment. So the minute I start taking pieces off to glue them down, the composition is going to change and shift a little bit, but that's okay. The goal of these classes is to get some unique creative inspiration. And to kind of see how we can push ourselves outside of things. So I think before I get any further, I'm going to carefully remove these. One thing you can do if you're plan the composition before you start gluing kind of person, you can set it all up the way you want it. You can take a picture of it and then use that as a reference as you recreate it. That's a really great way to approach this if you need the organization of preplanning it before you commit to glue. Or you can just let that be another thing that you embrace and just know it's going to shift a little bit as you go. The problem with gluing it down as you go is that sometimes you've got to peel it back up to get things to go underneath other things. But if the goal isn't for it to go underneath, then that frees it up a little bit for us. I kind of just depends on the mood you're in. This is already changing a bit. I just want to make sure I'm still leaving that room for the negative space to be in there. The other cool thing about using the black background is that the black background is now creating a line element in some places. You know, right here, it looks like there's a thick outline, which I love that. I love that so much. So maybe that's something I'm going to play with as I continue to finalize this collage and just kind of see you know, I really try to cut more pieces so that I can maintain that. Who knows? So that's glued down. Glued down the oranges. Actually, I really like that idea. I like the idea of having that black outline there, so I'm going to try to craft these in a way or manipulate these in a way so that they help reinforce that. Now, because I have the option to go back in with mixed media, I can use my mixed media to also fill in in between my collage pieces. So that might be something that I explore in the future, too. Because even with the black background, if I use paint pens, they should be opaque enough that I can still have them cover the black to kind of continue on this stained glass effect. I'm going to trim this off. So one helpful tip is to flip it over because then it's much easier to see where you've gone off the page. Now, if we consider this brighter blue again. Maybe we don't need it. I like it. I just don't know if we need it. And use some other pieces to kind of fill in my larger Black sections. I don't want to overthink it either. I really want to just play with this and have some fun. So it's a fine line between planning and composing and not overthinking. We need something down there, maybe another yellow section coming in. I didn't mean to use all the colors of the rainbow almost, but that's the way it ended up, and that's great. So remember, Mattis was very intentional with how he used his scissors to create shapes and to create compositions. As often as I'm creating more intuitively, that's not. I mean, he was doing that, I think, to some extent, but it was also very much intentional, as far as what became committed on the paper. Be it be nice to break up that space between the blue and the green at the top. Okay. This is great. I love this. Although it's the colors I mean, this is the bright fun colors that I'm gravitate towards. This is not necessarily my I wouldn't have made this if I wasn't working on something inspired by Matis. Which is pretty cool. Everything is looking really great. You use these little blobs of color to fill in a couple of the spaces. Then the last thing I wanted to is do a couple down here. But I think I'm going to do it with red, and I'm going to let it go off the page. In that one and then my other one. I just need to make it a little smaller, I think. Maybe we need just a couple other teeny tiny ones. There, I love that. That feels very inspired by Mattis. That feels very much in sync with my tendencies to a degree. I love this, I don't think it needs anything else as far as mixed media details. I'm going to just let it exist as an abstract collage. In the next one, I will demonstrate another way that we can approach doing Henri Matis inspired collages. See you soon. O. 6. Optional: Mixed Media: So I have this collage that I created inspired by the work of Matis, but there's just something about it that feels incomplete. And sometimes that happens. 'Cause when I made this one earlier, this one feels complete to me. I don't feel like there's anything I need to add to it. It feels resolved, and I'm very happy with how it turned out. Could I add mixed media details into this? Absolutely. Does it need it? No, not in my opinion. And that's what counts, right? Is your opinion when you're making your pieces. So I'm going to go ahead and let this one be done. But this one I want to work back into and kind of see if I can just take it apart further. So the mixed media aspect of the optional lesson in this class is completely outside the wheel House of Mattis. We can still be very much inspired by the work that he made, the shapes that he used. We can look back to his paintings for some inspiration if we want to, or we can just kind of add to it and put our own flavor into this to really kind of bring it to its resolution. And there's a lot of bold colors here. I mean, I pretty much of every color in the rainbow as far as the primaries and the secondaries go. I have a lot of play there. So I think a big part of what I want to do for this piece is to go back in with black and kind use that to create a more unified element to this. And then we'll see if I go into more colors. I've got my pascos hand. I've got some colored pencils off to the side. We'll see where this goes. But I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to start with my sharpie. I do also have a fine liner so that I can have a play of thick and thin when it comes to this. I think what I want to do is add some bold outline to start. This is really fun because at this stage of a piece, it becomes an open ended doodle. And there's a little bit of concern, right? We put the time into making the collage. Could the marker details ruin it? Maybe. But did we have fun making it? Yes. Is it okay if there's some awkwardness along the way as we resolve it? Absolutely. So don't be afraid to work back into your pieces in any way you want to to play and to continue to focus on growing as an artist, because that's what this series is about. Looking to the artists of the past for inspiration, weaving in what we want to do and experience and what we love, as well as challenging ourselves to try new things. So sometimes it's a little uncomfortable making art. That's okay. So I'm just going to start playing and see what happens. When we draw or paint back into collages, we are dealing with the overlap of the paper edges, and I very much like some really crisp lines. So I'm going to work really hard for my own personal preferences to make sure that whatever I'm adding is something that I love. So let's just have some fun and see where this goes. Actually, adding in the black line, I could have kept tracing that shape, but I'm going to actually create some new shapes, I think, out of this. And see what happens here because it's going to add a really fun new layer to the picture, it's gonna be great. Got a little bit of weirdness there, but that's okay. Also, I need to grab a new Sharpie. So I don't normally outline. Well, I guess I do. I do when I don't normally outline. I have not played around with outlining collages yet, even though creating mixed media collages is very much in my artistic wheel house, but doing it in this way isn't. But I also want to play with adding some different marks, too. So we're just going to have a good time playing with adding some details. You could paint back into your collages. You can use any media under the sun that you want to pretty much. So just have a lot of fun with it and kind of see where it takes you if you decide to add this process to your creation. I like getting that thicker black. I'm gonna do more of that. Make that its own element in here. You can also find that maybe you want to collage back into your collage. There's no rule saying that you can do more collaging back into what you've done. At this point, we can do a lot of editing as we go and curating and playing around with that, or we can let it be just whatever happens happens. I do often find that no matter what happens along the way, it does end up resolving itself in a really great way. So it's really important to sit with those uncomfortable moments in the art making process when they present themselves and just trust yourself and trust the process that as you keep going, you're going to figure out. What a piece needs. Because right now I'm not really sure. So that's absolutely okay. But repeating designs is always a great move. You know, you do something in one spot, do it again in another. I kind of helps create a sense of immunity across a piece. Don't worry if you make, you know, a mistake. You can always kind of figure out how to resolve that. So because I did some thickness over there, I'm going to add that over here, too, creating a sense of unity. Really good thing to focus on if you can because it'll help make everything feel like it makes more sense. There's parts of this that I really love. There's also parts of it where I'm just not quite sure yet. That's a big part of it is figuring out what parts don't feel like they're making sense that need a little bit more attention or work or whatever it might be. Everything is so busy and then this is pretty open. But if I collage more into it, maybe it's just because there's all those marks there. Maybe that's all it needs. It's just some lines. Having that black outline makes it easier to not have to worry about being so neat when you're doing marks like this, 'cause if you bump the edge, the edge is already black. Alright, that's better. I like that. So these lines, even though they' different, they still balance each other out. But we can have some fun we can give some thicker black sections too. Repetition can give us that visual interest. That's cool. Okay. The white parts here are kind of a nice balance. Maybe what they need is some color. So maybe we should go in with some other Pascapen details to kind of help do that. I only have the one green, so I'm going to kind of I'm going to add some green, and that's going to help balance out that part of it a little bit. Yeah, I like that. Okay, so I'm going to do more of that. Adding more of these other colors in. And the great thing about pasca pens or other acrylic paint pens is that they should go on opaquely so they can kind of cover over whatever's underneath them. Sometimes it takes a couple of coats, but for the most part, it should do that for you. This is starting to be really exciting for me. I wasn't too sure when I did this scalloped thing. I wanted to kind of break up the red. Sometimes you just need to change the color parts of it, because it wasn't really in line with anything else that was happening, other than the fact that I have some half circles and circles in the piece. But for me, that wasn't feeling like enough for it to make sense that I did them. But I did it, and it's sharpie. So it was there to stay. But then it gives you a really fun chance to play around with how you can solve the problem you've created. And you add something that just doesn't feel right. How can you make it feel right? So anywhere I'm kind of going over the Sharpie, I can always clean that back up 'cause the Sharpie will go over the pasta. Just fine. And actually, I really love this now. So now I think I need to do the same thing to this one. But what I might do is start with the blue first. And then I'll go in at the Sharpie since I've already kind of figured out the recipe. But I do have to remember that because these are paint pens, that paint stays wet. So I have to be careful not to smudge my arm through the wet paint. It does help to let the pasta dry before you go in with the Sharpie. But I'm a little impatient sometimes. For these smaller ones, I'm going to use my fine liner and I'm just going to go over them a couple of times so that I get the thickness. But if I go in with the sharpie, it'll be too thick, and I'll lose those tiny little green dots. A couple other areas I need to clean up with my Sharpe. I think that's good. I'm really happy with how that turned out, and wow, it is different than where it started. So trusting the process, really just letting one step guide the other step, and then just keep taking symposes so you can look back at it and kind of see what does it need are really important when you're adding drawing details of any kind or painting details even back into your collages. So this is very much not like a collage that Mattis might make, but this is and this is actually not an artwork that I would make either. This is very different for me, but I'm really excited about it, and I think it could unlock some fun, other exciting things in the future. And that is kind of what gets me so excited about looking to these artists of the past because you just never know where it's going to take you and some really cool stuff can come out of it. So I can't wait to see what you created. Definitely, please share it over in the products and resources section. And if you decide to go mixed media with your Mattis inspired collages, make sure you take a photo of your collage stage, like when it's done at that stage and then take a picture when it's done with the mixed media cause then it'll be really fun to kind of see where it was after collaging and then where it went after you went in with mixed media details. So have so much fun. I can't wait to see how they turn out. And thank you so much again for joining me in Mattis inspired class. You're focusing on organic collages. 7. Final Thoughts: Thank you so much for joining me in my Matis class as we continue the artist inspired series. I love all of his works, but it's been really fun to do a little bit more of a singular focus on his later collage pieces as we get inspiration for our own collage artworks. I can't wait to see what you created. So please pop on over to the Projects and Resources section of class and upload a photo of your Mattis inspired collage to the student gallery, and don't forget to check out the works of other students. It's always so fun to see what color combinations people chose, the different ways that they chose to draw with scissors to cut out shapes both geometric and organic for the project and if they decided to add mixed media elements to their pieces, how they went about that and what that added to their project. After you've submitted your project to the student gallery, I would really appreciate it if you took some time to leave a review. This is a great way for you to kind of summarize and think back what you learned in the class, how you applied it, how you might apply it in the future, and give me some very important feedback as I continue to explore the artist inspired series, as well as future classes across the Skillshare platform. I love hearing what my students thought about the class both through the texts that they include in their student projects as well as in their student reviews. And I take all of it to heart as I continue to plan amazing classes for you in the future. So thank you so much in advance for taking time to leave a review. We can continue to connect beyond this class. So don't forget to pop on over and check out my YouTube channel and subscribe there. I post items related to what I'm up to on Skillshare, both as a teacher and a student. I also share all of the things creative that I'm working on, both kind of samples from my sketchbook pages, techniques I'm exploring and experimenting with, art adventures that I go on. I really have a lot of fun stuff plan for the future, and YouTube is going to be one of the places that I share all of it. So for even more ideas and inspirations, be sure to head on over to my YouTube channel. And I also share everything that I'm up to in a snippet sort of way over on my Instagram. I post artworks that I've created. I celebrate the artworks that students created and kind of help get people excited about the class and just show them all the fun that we're having on Skill Share. Follow me on Instagram also to stay connected, and don't forget to click the Follow button below so that we can stay connected on Skill Share two and so that you don't miss any of the exciting classes that I have coming up in the future. Thank you so much for taking the class, and I'll see you next time. And then I get. That looks cool. How is that supposed to be? It's it's an abstract thing. It started as a collage, like that one. I it's just paper. And then I went back in with Sharpie and pastas. That looks really cool. Thank you. Yeah, I'm really liking it. I wasn't sure for it a little bit there, but no, I really love it. Yeah, I really love it. Thanks, buddy.