Transcripts
1. Intro: Hi, everyone. Welcome
to Many class, which is dedicated
to using art and creativity as a way
to explore yourself, relax, have fun, and reflect on your life in a
light and aesthetic way. The method that we're going
to be using is collage. Today we'll make a self
portrait with its help. Collage is a very versatile
technique that teaches you to let go of control and
embrace freedom in your art. Collage can be a
great way to warm up a little bit if you're feeling
stuck and out of ideas. It can help generate
those ideas, add some randomness
and playfulness, which is very useful, especially if you
are feeling bored of the way that you were doing things previously in your art. It adds fresh. And in addition to all
those amazing qualities, collage can help you have
a self reflection session, dedicate some time to yourself. You can find out
more about yourself, your current state of mind
and desires through collage. Sometimes it can open
unexpected things. Today, we'll have
some self care time, which can feel
like a meditation. It can be done alone and
in a group of friends, both ways can open interesting perspectives
and bring new thoughts. I'm Kate keen to freedom, and being an artist
for most of my life, I noticed that making art makes a massive impact
on my mental health. It helps me relax,
release tension, pour out overwhelming feelings, tell my story to the world without even needing
to use the words. And making something
creative with my hands doubles that effect. It brings on a very focused, almost meditative state of mind. Also, in this class, I
will give you tips on how to use creative
practices like colli both as a relaxing self
exploration technique and a very useful tool
for your art practice. This class fits all the levels from complete
beginners to prose. It requires some materials as magazines and booklets to
cut out from scissors, glues stick, and a big
piece of paper or cart. But it can totally be
done in digital as well. You will just need some
drawing or design program like Procreate or
anything that you have. So if you're ready to
self explore beautifully, have some time for yourself and make a new inspiring art piece. Hop on, see you in my class.
2. About the Project: The project for this class
is the collage, of course. Our workflow will go like this. Firstly, we will determine your goal or prompt
for the collage. I will give you some
variants to choose from, but you can also
create your own. Secondly, we will gather the
material, aka the images. I will explain how to pick them and what to
pay attention to. Next, we will start assembling all the materials
we gather together, get rid of what we don't need, and find the composition that we like gluing it on the
piece of paper or card. And Walla, your collage is done. I will give you some self
reflective questions, which you can ask yourself
if you feel like it. And also some tips
on how you can use this collage in your further
life and creative practice. Now, let's quickly go
through the materials that we need to start
and get to the collage.
3. Materials: For this class, we will
need some basic things, a pair of scissors or paper knife and ideally a
cutting mat to go with that. A glue stick or craft glue, but I find the stick
to be most convenient. A card sheet or a
big piece of paper. I recommend taking an A three
size thick paper or card, so it survives the glue
and doesn't warp too much. It's easier with a
biggie size because sometimes you'll find
quite big images, for example, A four
sheet for magazine. But it can, of course, be done on smaller formats as well. If you don't have
an A three size, you can duct tape together
two A four sheets. And the most important
is, of course, the magazines, newspapers, booklets, any sort of printed materials that you are fine with cutting into pieces. I usually take
advertisement magazines from the lobby whenever
I see a nice one. The more diversity
you have, the easier. For example, some magazines about traveling with landscapes, some about interior design, some about fashion, et cetera. You can begin at
Treasure hunt on this. Trust me, as soon as you
start looking for it, you start finding
opportunities everywhere. Fliers on the street, free newspapers in
the underground, junk mail from your post box. I try to find all my materials for free
because when I buy a magazine, I don't feel like cutting it. But if you're completely
out of ideas, you can always go find
the thickest magazine with the most diverse range
of topics and buy it. If you're doing
this together with your friends, it's even easier. Each of you can bring just
two or three magazines, and you set share
everything and have fun. If you're still struggling
with finding the materials, you can also do the whole
practice in digital. Then you will just need a
drawing or design program to work in and the Internet. I use my iPad and Procreate
for it sometimes, and let's move to the first
stage of our project, defining the theme
of our collage.
4. Pick the Creative Task: This part is small but
important because we need to set an intention for our
work before we start. We're making a collage
self portrait. What does it even mean? It doesn't mean that
you have to recreate your face with cutouts
from the magazines, although that might also be an interesting task
for another time. What I mean is we
will try to look for images that reflect
us in some way, and it is a very
intuitive thing. It might be a color, a mood, a specific object or a nature of view that
warms your heart, or something you like doing
in your life, et cetera. And you're creating this map or tag cloud that can give an impression of who
you are as a person. This can be hard if you're used to relying on logic
all the time. You will have to
switch it off for a little while here and rely more on your
feelings and intuitions. Here are the topics that I
want to offer for this class. Self portrait as I am.
Who am I right now? An introduction, a visual
expression of who you are. Who I want to be a
future self portrait. What version of you do you
want to become to grow into? Focus more on how you
want to feel and what you want to do and less
on what things you want to have a
specific quality that you want to nurture
and develop in yourself. If, for example, you want to
become more brave this year or explore your passionate
sensual side more, you can manifest it
in your collage. So it is similar to
the previous task, but here you are focusing
on one specific trait. You can make a collage
of your shadow side. It is a topic for a
whole other class. But in short, shadow side
consists of all the things, qualities, ways of
expression, et cetera, that you do not
accept in yourself, that you're not
allow in yourself because at some
point in your life, it was claimed bad, probably by your parents or
the surrounding community. And often many of these
traits are not actually bad. For example, setting
boundaries or feeling worthy of good
things in this life. That's why reclaiming them
can be very beneficial. So for this collage,
think of things, traits that you're jealous
of and other people are even irritated by but can't
yet allow to yourself. Create a collage of the person consisting of these qualities. Who are they? How do they feel? What do they do?
Where do they live? This can be a very
resourceful technique. These are four variants for me, but you can also create
one of your own. Just determine
exactly your theme before you start working on the collage and maybe
even write down, you can do it on the back
side of the collage. As in the process, you might get driven away by all the
images that you see and having it in front of your eyes will help
you stay focused. Now as we have determined the task or prompt
for our collage, let's start gathering
the materials for it.
5. Gather the Material: And now's the time to dig into our magazines and newspapers. Here you will need to
trust the process. Just start looking
through the magazines, keeping in mind your
prompt and whatever sparks and emotion
you feels right, interests, you like something, cut it out, or rip out the whole page and
put it into a pile. Don't cut it out carefully yet. This process should
be quite quick. We are just hoarding all
the materials we can get. We will pick the best
out of it later. So the task for this stage is to gather a pile of
very roughly cut or torn out images that drew in and felt
relevant for your topic. Try not to stay too
long at this stage, as you can get tired and have no more energy for
assembling the collage, or you can do it in
two parts, actually. One day for gathering the images and the second day for assembling it all together. Whatever works for you best. If you are doing it digitally, it is a bit harder because
you have no limitations and all the images in the
world at your disposal. Try to search for
broad topics first like landscapes,
houses, traveling, interors animals,
hobbies, professions, fashion, relationships, art, and then search visually
what catches your eye. Save the images that you
like to your device. This will be your digital pile, and we'll meet in the
next part where we will start looking
through our treasures.
7. Afterthoughts: After you finish your collage, give yourself a
little space from it. If you're doing it
all in one day, just have a little break, go for some tea, and don't look at
it for some time. And then let's return to it and take an
attentive look on it. What do you feel when looking at your collage? Do you like it? What emotion does
it evoke in you? Does it reflect the initial
theme that you picked for yourself or did it go in a different direction
in the process? Why do you think that happened? How would you name
it now? What are your favorite elements
on the collage? Best part of the composition? Did something surprise
you in the final results? Why? You don't
have to ask all of these questions or
these specific ones. You can pick just one
question and go deeper on it or you just go with your
own thought process. These questions are
just for some help and guidance if you have no
idea where to start. Also, I would
recommend writing down some of your observations
about the collage. You can even do it on
the back side of it. Makes it easier to
come back to it later and revise and see if your thoughts and impressions changed or something changed
in your life since then. If the clash was for
your future self, you can put it on your wall as an inspiration and to be
reminded about your goal. And as for the creative tips, you now have a great mood board
for your future projects. You can create a piece
of art based on it, or even take parts of it and redraw it in a
different technique. Collage can be a great
way to make sketches for paintings if you feel
uninspired and out of ideas. It always brings
some unexpectedness and freshness to your art. You can make a series of
collage out of this one. It can be a great
personal project. You can use the collage
as your exploration or a new series on the topic that emerged
while you creating it. Add a color palette and
your thoughts and needs, and you have a ready inspirational pack
for your new project. And congratulations. Our
project for this class is done. Please share your collage
in the project section. I'm thrilled to see what
you have come up with. And if you can, please
share the prompt for too, as it adds the precious context. And let's meet for a short
summary in the final part.
8. Summary: I really hope that you enjoy this class and
that you will take something from it into your
life and creative practice. Today, we have set an intention
or prone for a collage, picked the images that
drew our attention, then revised the
materials we gathered, and created a
composition out of it. We created a collage
that can serve as a self exploration tool and relaxing practice or as a mood board and sketch for
future creative projects. Or both because our art is
born from our inner life. Let me know if you felt a change of your state of
mind or mood during this exercise or if something
was difficult for you, I will be very glad if you leave your thoughts and
reviews because it helps me make my classes
better for you and also feel that my work is
needed and has value. I can't wait to see
wonderful collage in the project section. If you have any questions or want to discuss something
about the class, please leave a comment
in the discussions. Check out my other
classes on Skillshare. I have plenty of them. And if you want to chat or see my journey of creating a
new series of paintings, follow any of my Instagram
pages or my YouTube. I'm always happy to meet
new creative people. Hope you had fun and
wish you a great day. See you in my other
classes. Bye.
Kate Grishina, Illustrator, artist
