Collage and Paint Sunflowers

1. Introduction: Hi, guys. I am Sherri Burbach. I'm a mixed media artist and writer, and I love sunflowers. I recently went to a sunflower farm and I was so inspired. I took in how tall these flowers were and the color, what it was like to stand before them, what that felt like. How they moved in the breeze. I took in all of that and I thought it would be great to do a collage and paint project inspired by sunflowers. One of the things that strikes me about sunflowers in particular is their ragged leaves and petals. They're so beautiful. But yet, if you look closely, there's a lot of roughness to them and I thought that would make a perfect collage project. So what we're going to do is paint a sunflower, and we're going to use a lot of elements of collage to create all those petals that go around that head of the sunflower. It's a fun project, and it's a great way to use up scraps. I have a lot of different types of collage scraps, a lot of different papers that I'm going to show you I hope it gives you an idea of what you can use. There's magazine pages, or just scrap pages, there's junk mail, there's all kinds of things. I hope you will look through what you have and just really pull out things that inspire you and use that to create. In addition to the scrap papers, we're going to be using acrylic paint and a canvas and it's any size canvas that you want to work with. I used a square canvas 2. Sunflowers Supplies: In addition to the scrap papers, we're going to be using acrylic paint and a canvas and it's any size canvas that you want to work with. I used a square canvas. You could do it on any size that you want to use. We're also going to be adhering those collage elements to the canvas and for that, we're going to use gel medium. The brand that I love for this is golden brand, but really it's any type of gel medium that you're comfortable working with. If you don't have that, you can also use just regular glue, like an Elmers glue and use that, especially if you're new and starting out and you just want to play around and see what works. That works perfectly fine. My preferred medium to adhere things though, is gel medium. As you do more projects like this, Um, you might want to pick up one of those supplies, and of course, paint brushes, water, paper towels, those are all great for this project as well. 3. (1) Making Petals: This project is close to my heart because it involves collage and paint. I like to do both sometimes. What I'm focusing on with the collage and I've got some papers here I'll show you. But I have this square canvas. This is a ten by ten. You can use any size, Canvas. What I'm focusing on is this inspiration picture. And the ragged edges of these petals, I am in love with the ragged edges of them. I just love them. So what I want to do is do a combination of paint and collage, and that's what we're working towards. Because we're using paint and collage, so I'll show you the paints. These are paints we've been using in this course. Got some regular body acrylic, black and white in regular body, then a couple of different yellows and a burnt sienna, naples yellow, and a cadi yellow. You've got that I have because I like using fluid acrylic, especially with collage and paper. I've got a collection of fluid acrylics that I really like that are all from the golden brand. Now, when I tell you fluid acrylics and things like that, I'm giving you supplies, but you can use whatever you feel. This would be a project that would be perfect with craft paint, for example. So feel free to use what you have. Here's what I'm using. I have two different colors of green, palo green, green gold, Nicko Oso gold. I have a raw umber, a transparent yellow iron oxide, and then a yellow. These are in fluid acrylic, which means they're fully pigmented, but the texture of them is more watery. When I say watery, that's the texture, not the pigment. The pigment itself is as vibrant and bright as a regular body acrylic. That's what's so fascinating about them. I'm also going to use this yellow India ink. This is golden yellow from Bombay, my favorite brand to use. I've got that. I have my canvas and I have a collection of collage papers. When I say a collection, it's just random stuff. Some of these are scrapbook papers, big pile of those. Let's get through that. I've got some music sheets. I have some book pages. Um, I have some stuff that I've already painted on, you just scraps that I used as a scrap. I might use that. I keep all my scrap papers. I always keep them off to the side because you never know when you can use them for collage or underwork or in your art journal, even. I have a old recipe book page. I love old recipe books, you guys, and I love these ones where it has people's handwriting and their recipes are so hilarious. And they usually have little like illustrations in there, like that one does. So it makes me laugh. I don't know if I'll use these for this, but I have some old book pages of bird books. For this one, I probably will not use these, but, you know, you never know. More music sheets, um I've got a recipe that fell out of a book, um, yeah, more handwritten recipes. This is from a cookbook, I bought at a rummage sale. These are all papers that were just randomly painted on scraps, you know, that I used up old paint that I had on my canvas. Like if I have just paint leftover at the end on my palette, I just put it onto scrap paper. That's what this is. And then I keep it. And I might continue to add stuff to it. I might rip this up, chop it up, use it in different ways. So that's what all these are. I have this old we went to Fast Food somewhere and they gave us this bag and I thought the bag was just great because it had all these different images on it. I like the color and the texture of it, so I kept it and I probably will use it for collage for this. I have a magazine that has interesting inside pictures, fiber art, and I'll probably use this for collage as well. These are all the things I'm starting with and what I want to do is just start thinking about what these petals look like. These petals are ragged and they go all the way around. So I am envisioning me ripping pieces that I can collage then around this center, and I'm going to paint the background here. We'll do that first, and then this will be the elements that we put on top. But I want to work on them first so they have time to dry so we can then put them on our painting. So that's what I'm focusing on the raggedness of them, the length of them, that type of thing. So I'm going to just randomly let's start with a magazine page. They're always fun to use. I want something that has a lot of business. Start with that one. And I am not fussy. I rip them out. I don't you know, I'm not I really am not fussy about perfection when it comes to collage. I will rip until I feel like I have a piece that I like. So I've got a couple of ragged pieces here. I like that. Dig into this. I'm gonna start by just ripping that in app. How about that? I I like these illustrations. So I'm gonna go with that. So I like these pieces that end up with a point on them. I am taking note of how it rips because these petals have points at the ends. Many of them do. Some of them don't of them do, so I'm taking note of that as I rip. And it's okay if you have smaller pieces, larger pieces. If you have a wonky piece like this that just rips. You don't know what you're going to use at the end. So I have those. I want to focus on put those aside. I want to focus on maybe some of these recipe pages because I think those are interesting. What we got here. I just love old recipe books. I mean, I am wild about them. I think they're awesome. Something nostalgic about them and charming and, you know, you come across some of these recipes and you think, Wow, really? You guys ate all that? Like you know, some of the stuff that we just don't make today. So I've got weird pieces like this. That's okay. That's good. I like weird pieces. And as far as how many to do, I'm just going by what feels right. It's better. I think if you have a collection to choose from as you're choosing what to put around the outside of your flower, if you run out, you can also make some more. I mean, you're not stuck by what you do prior to it. You can make some more at them later. It's okay. I'm going to rip up these music sheets. Again, I'm trying to rip on an angle so that when I'm ripping this, I'm trying to rip there so that this top comes to an angle a little bit. This one comes to an angle, so that's good to use for a pedal, like that kind of stuff. I'm really just really just trying to get pieces that way. And while I am paying attention to what shape comes, I'm not planning, I'm not going to make it perfect. I'm really just going with it, ripping it with the idea that I want it to come to a point or at least have an edge that would be helpful to use with these petals and maybe some of them won't be. And then I won't use them, and that's okay. All of these items that I'm using, I mean, most of them, if I'm talking about these old books, I get at rummage sales or estate sales, thrift stores, Old books in particular, I feel like don't get a lot of love, because we're not reading them, and I feel like this is a nice way to use them. There might be purists out there who don't agree with that, I do. I think I think that's pretty cool to use something like that. So just continue ripping these. Now, we are going to do some stuff to these too. They're not just going to stay this way. Some of them will be transformed because we're making a picture of them. So I'm going to put these ones that are, um, that already have some paint on there. I'm gonna take a couple of them, but the majority of them I'm gonna put aside because I want to show you what I do for that. So I'm putting that aside. And notice I'm not worrying about the colors that are on these papers or the collage sheets or anything else. I really am just going randomly. I think when you do this and you really go just kind of you just sit here and rip up some paper without, you know, thinking too much about it, it really is relaxing, I find. Don't you when you're doing that? I think it's pretty pretty interesting. So I'm going to put these painted on sheets aside for now and take this lovely um, recipe page from this lovely woman, Wever she was. Now her stuff is becoming art. I don't know if she'd like it, but you know what? I hope she would. Okay, so I have some more music sheets I'm gonna put aside. I want to focus on some of these collage scrapbook papers, rather. So I do have some that have this kind of yellowy, you know, which is our color palette. You know, we're doing a sunflower. So I have some of these, so I will rip them. Now, I want to take note, these are a lot thicker than most of these, and that's okay. We can do different thicknesses. Just be aware of it because we are going to adhere all this with gel medium. That's the other thing we need, um that I did not mention in the supply list. But that is how we're going to attach these. So these will all work regardless of thickness, they will all work. But be conscious of them because they'll rip differently. They'll have a different look. You know, these are all choices that we're making for our picture. You'll note when I'm ripping this way, the white shows on the edges, and I kind of like that because it gives me an opportunity to add more color. So, you know, that's up to you. You don't have to use the yellow pieces. You can use, you know, whatever and make it work. So I've got a couple of those yellows. Let me put that aside. What else we got in here. We have something totally. I mean, besides the yellow here, if I look at this, this is all pink and purple is this something that can work? You know what it is. Don't worry about what kind of paper you have. Even if you have paper that doesn't match with your color scheme, you can make it work in your painting. I'm going to take a few of these. Okay. It's a weird little piece. Okay. And so you've got this, this kind of even matches, so I might not even paint over this. I'm gonna go to see how it goes. But I'm gonna rip it and include it. There's an art to ripping paper, you guys. I don't know if I have the skills to do this professionally. The paper ripping that is. If there is such a profession as professional paper ripper, but I have ripped quite a lot of paper for art projects. I'll tell you that. So keep ripping this. I just love these little wonky pieces. They're really nice. So we've got a few of those. I'm going to put that aside. Here's some white and black. We can definitely use this. We can make some nice color on there that should go. And let's see. Rip those pieces. So these are small. Let's get a nice long one. And Okay. I've got a couple of those. This is a black and white where the black is the dominant color. We can still use it. You bet we can. The thing about mixed media art is you can use so many elements to create your image. I think that's great because how many things are considered garbage in this world, and this allows us to transform them in a really interesting way. I think a really beautiful way because I love mixed media art. I'm drawn to it. And let's see here. Got this nice long piece. Rip the edge off. There's a straight edge. No, I don't want to straight edge. Put that on the reuse pile. I rip this straight edge off, get a little angle. I've got that type. I like this is a different pattern than these one, so I will use it. Get a couple of those pieces. Okay. Then stripes. I love the contrast of that. Let's use this one definitely. Oop. Okay. Look at that. How interesting is that? Okay, got that. Let's use one more because I just loving the stripe on here. So cool. All right. Get a few of those. One more, you think? One more you guys. One more long one. I think this will help us when we do black and white in a picture, it's always helpful. And I like the black and white of this. Now, we do have a lot of black and white, but I'll do, just a couple. How about that? Just a couple. Especially 'cause that ripped so nice. Since it was so polite and ripped in a nice way for me. That one didn't one didn't cooperate with me. How dare how dare this paper not cooperate? Okay. That one's a good one. Take this little tiny piece away. So here's a couple of other papers. Now, this is paper that's very thick, really not in our color scheme at all. But I'm going to show you that we can even use that. So, I mean, think about the papers you would have. Do you have old wrapping paper? Do you have old, you know, junk mail? I mean, that works. All of that works. In fact, I might even have a piece here. Good. I'm going to use it, guys. Yeah, I got an old piece of junk mail sitting right here. All right. Old piece of some kind of TV sports advertising. Let's use it. Now this is very thick, but we can use it. It will rip. When it rips, the paper breaks down like that. See that? You get an interesting texture. Okay? Old food boxes. Anything works for collage. I love using junkmil though, don't you? Don't you love the idea? Then just think about it. Anytime you get junk mail, you can go, Oh, that's cool. I can use that for my art. I like the wording on here, although it's probably some fine print stuff that I don't want in my art, but I like the wording on here, so I'm gonna use that. Let's see here. Okay, so here's another thing. This doesn't match, the color schemes too dark, doesn't matter. We'll keep adding a couple pages for our leaves, our petals, do that. Finally, I have these that are leafy. If you got something like that, you should take advantage of it. That can work. We'll just do a couple of those. Okay. So I'm going to clean all this up and then I'm going to have these papers ready because we're going to work on these a little. 4. (2) Painting Petals: I have all my random scraps. I have paint on my palette. This is all the colors. We're going to use these in the regular painting, and we're going to start by making the scraps that we have have touches of these colors. I have the India ink and gold and yellow. What I'm going to start with is anything that has a thick texture. This was the junk mail piece and it has a really thick texture. I have a flat paint brush and I'm going to just use some color on it. I'm going to take some white and I have this piece of white paper that's just going to protect the edges. So I'm going to go over it. Now, you don't need to cover everything. I mean, you can see the colors through here a little bit. You don't need to cover everything. I'm trying to give it the touches of yellow that would help it be part of the painting because that's what I'm looking for. So I'm just painting that piece. I'm going to put it aside. Stick to my fingers. I liked the color of these pieces. These little brown pieces, so I'm going to leave them the way they are. You don't have to paint everything. This is another really thick piece of paper that was the scrapbook paper, and it's very thick and I am going to paint on it. Again, some of these colors on the paper are going to show through. That's okay. We don't mind that. Just putting a couple and I'm not even worried about how much paints on there, what it looks like. Putting that aside. Let's do a couple more of those. I've got a couple of those really thick scrap of pages. I don't know about you, but I am somebody that buys scrapbook paper and I don't know if I ever use it for I mean, I used to scrapbook a long time ago, and then somehow my scrapbook page painting or pages rather, became just papers in my paintings. Now, this was the scrapbook page that had the green little bit of kind of pink. I kind of like it as it is. I like the idea of putting maybe a little greenery around the edge. I'm going to leave this as it is. Here's another bit from that junk mail cover up this and this is where the paper curled a little. I'm going to go right down to the edge with that paint. I'm doing just one side of the papers because it's going to be collage down, so we're not going to see the other side. Put that aside to paint later. Now, these little um, this is from the takeout, restaurant. I like the rawness of these. I like the color of them. They don't match with, let's say, regular sunflower. I mean, this isn't going to be like, what a regular sunflower petal is going to look like. But yet, I like it raw. I like the way it is, so I'm going to leave it the way it is. I may use it and I may not. Here's some more thicker scrapbook paper paint on that. I'm using the white in this case because it really helps provide a base for the yellow. The yellow is not as opaque as the white in this case, and the white can help that yellow go over it a little bit better. But if you want to just do yellow, if you want to do gold, in fact, I could add a little bit of naples yellow, give it some variety here. That would be great. I've got that piece and I'm going to put that aside to dry. I'm going for anything that has some thickness to it. Here's another scrapbook page. I do like the black and white on there, so I'm not going to put the white paint over it. I'm just going to put the yellow because that way the black design shows through. I'm going to leave it like that. And let's see if I can get another one of those. Now, this one, the black is a dominant color on here when I put the yellow on here. Do I love that? I don't know if I love it. Put a little white over it. You can still see the pattern, you can still see the black underneath, but it's covered with the white a little bit. Now, this one has some yellow Oops. This one has some yellow on it, it could be nice with just a coat of yellow over the edges that were white. And we'll do another piece like that. Another scrapbook page paper. A paper you have that is different color, you know, thick, weird looking, you can use it. You can make it work. Go through your pile. There's another one. I'm going to put that to the side to dry, go through your pile, and just paint them as you see fit randomly. Add the yellow, naples yellow, whenever you want your picture. Okay. We've got those. I'll keep working on those off camera. I don't think you want to watch me paint all of them, but I want to show you some with the ink. What I like to do with ink is to take some of these book pages. We have the words that show through, and I want to keep all that. I don't want to cover it with paint, and that's where ink provides a really nice look. I have this ink bottle dropper. Sometimes I apply it with this, but for this, I'm going to just use this here. It's going to roll. For this, I'm going to use just a craft paint brush and dip it in the ink. And put some ink on there. And if you notice it keeps the words underneath. It really seeps into the paper in a really lovely way, and so I love that. I'm going to let that dry. I'm going to do this with all the thinner paper that I have because ink works really well on that. It's thinner paper. It can go over m the words and the images that might be on there. And on this one, I even have a little slip that it has not covered, it's not been covered with the ink, and that's okay too. Some of the plain paper can show through. And you might want to leave a couple like that. I'm going to do that with this one has nice big wording on it. I'm going to leave it as it is. This one has nice music music notes, wording on it. I'm going to leave it. I'm going to take a few and leave it just like that. But the rest, I'm going to put some ink on there. And a little ink goes a long way, so you dab it in there and just spread it out and put it aside to dry. I like the ink over hand writing like this. I think that can look really cool. I'm going to do that, putting them all to the side. These little tiny strips. Going to use some ink on that. Lovely. Putting all over to the side here to dry. Let's see what else we got that we can put some ink on. Another really thin piece of paper that comes from a cookbook, has a little bit of handwriting on it, and I'm going to do that. I'm just going to keep working on these. What I'm going to do is take a couple and leave this I like that it has just a little bit of ink on there. That's a nice look. Like that. Just has a little bit. I'm going to leave that. Let's go back to the striped pages because I've got these thinner pages I can cover with ink, the thicker pages I'm going to paint. Some of the this was from the magazine. There's $1 on one side, I'm not going to use that, but this is a nice pattern on it and I like the coloring on it, and it has that white edge from where I ripped it. I'm going to just take ink and go over the page and it's a slippery thicker page. But because of the design on it and how the paper is, I think that looks really nice and will work well in our collage. Here's another one from the magazine. It's a slippery firm piece of magazine paper. It has that white edge from where I ripped it. If I put a little ink on there, it brings the image to life and it helps it blend in with yellow. Put that to the side. Now I want to go back to these black and white pages because I could put paint over them, but I really like the design of the black and white, especially the black stripes. I want to just put a little ink over it because I want that black design to stand out in our final piece. I don't want it to be covered up at all. You can see the difference. Let's do this one. This is ink. Let's do one with Let's do one with paint. The paint covers the black a little bit, and the ink lets the black shine. It's a little bit different, has a different consistency, different vibrancy. I'm going to go through paint the rest or leave the rest. I'm just going to evaluate and we'll come back and start painting our picture. 5. (3) Paint The Background: Canvas here, I have my inspiration photo, and I have my palette. This is the same palette I just used on all the scraps of paper which are now at the edge of my painting table all drying. You see some of them here. They're just all sitting there waiting to dry because they're going to get their turn on our painting. But for now, we want to get a place for them all to sit. We want the background elements on there. So I'm using colors I think will go to create the background. I'm using some greens because I'm going to put some leaf area. I'm going to put that center area that these lovely petals can float around. The only thing I'm going to change from this inspiration picture is the sky because we have this beautiful cloudy sky, it has blue on there. That would be beautiful for a painting. However, What I want to do is have you know, I'm picturing this sunflower forward more so that all you see in the back is just greenery. And that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to focus on this sunflower against green. And do you know what? Since it's our painting, we can do whatever we want. How about that? Isn't that cool? Freeing. I'm going to use this as the inspiration and I'm going to create this area for the sunflower to set up. I'm going to start with the circle, this round area with the brown. This is the regular body acrylic. Really what I'm doing right now with the brown is working to add a placeholder for where this sunflower is going to be on the canvas. I'm just almost sketching it out but doing it with paint. I'm adding a little Nicko Oso gold. So between the brown and the Nickel Oso gold, I'm just creating a little center. Doing a little round center. And from this, I'm envisioning the petals to all come off of here. Got that. Got that. We'll let that little guy dry. I'm going to focus on the rest of it. All the greenery. Now on this inspiration photo, again, we have different sunflowers here and there. I'm really just going to focus on the green. I want this sunflower to stand out against all these green petals, all these green leaves. I mean, I want it to be a see of green and just have this one beautiful sunflower against that. I am going to take this is phallogreen and I like mixing it with different greens. It's a really nice vibrant, bright green. I'm just creating a stem, bringing it all the way down. These early layers really are just sketching things out and getting placement. That's the way I look at them. I don't look at it as even working on the final picture. To me, I'm just creating the layers that the final picture will sit on in a way. That's how this works for me. I'm just creating a couple leafy areas and blocking out where those might be. I've got one there, that one coming off here. Again, this is your painting. If you want to make I want to make this a little bit more ragged, you want to make these different looking, that is up to you. Of I've got that leaf coming off there. I have the placeholder of where some of these more prominent elements are going to go on the painting. Got that. Got this big leaf down at the bottom that is just so attractive to me. I love it. It comes up like that. I really goes all the way down. I'm going to do that. Again, as I've said before, you know, your inspiration photo is just there to help guide you. Don't worry about getting it perfect. You know, allow yourself to paint what you're going to paint. No, I'm not saying painting direct and trying to make it, you know, exactly as you see it is wrong. That's a different type of painting. I'm saying for these exercises, really allow yourself to just let your mind go and use it as inspiration, but see what comes up here, see what develops. I'm going to start filling in the background with some green and also some leaves and I'm really just blending a little bit more of the green gold in with this philo green because I want this background color to be a little bit different. I am adding the same ragged leaves and I'm going to put a little bit of white in there. I just want them to be a little bit different, a little bit softer looking. These two are acting as placeholders. I mean, really, I'm going to keep adding layers until I feel like the painting is at this complete stage. That's the way I like to work. I like to blend directly on the canvas. So put some more hallo green in there. I could sometimes blend on the palette, but I really like to see what comes up on the canvas. I like to see what surprises happen that way. And I like adding the elements of white that just blend along. Now you'll notice these leaves, none of them are in here. There aren't leaves that go up over this and you have to picture I'm doing these leaves because the petals are all going to come off of here. This will all be covered up with these petals, but I'm just creating that background space. So we're we're creating our own sunflower field here with this star sunflower that's going to have paper as its petals. I think the paper is really, it's really going to blend well with this ragged look of the sunflowers. That's one of the things that attracted me to sunflowers and to painting them was just seeing how rough and ragged they looked and gosh, I just thought they were beautiful in this type of roughness, in the type of way that, you know, Van Gogh saw them as beautiful because they were not perfect and, you know, what we would define as traditionally beautiful flowers. But they are. They're just so amazing, aren't they? And I like the rough and ragged look of them and the paper is going to work well with that. I'm going to keep painting and keep adding some leaves. Using the same brush, I'm just going to keep at it. I'm going to go until I fill up the entire background. Then I'm going to come back and put some more detail in here. I've got to this point where I have a lot of leaves built up. This is still the main leaf. It's a little bit darker. These other leaves, I'm mixing the green gold with the gold green gold with the fallo green with the white, and I'm filling in. Now that I have this much filled in, I'm going to keep working on the background. Oops. Put a little bit more green gold on my palette. I'm using the green gold because it has a lightness to it. It allows whatever I'm putting on here to be a little bit lighter than these main leaves because this is the background I'm working on. I'm going to fill in because now I've got a bunch of leaves here and I'm just going to fill in with What I like to say is the look of leaves. But I'm not painting individual leaves. It's just look of a patch of leaves. I'm filling in with this green gold just like I did with a leaf. I use green gold. I use a little bit of the palo green, and I'm putting that in there just a little bit here and there. So go all the way down this side, for example, just to fill in and so I have all these little patches and I'm going to take the white and blend, just like I did with the leaves. Going to blend so that I have a variety of color. I'm not worried if this looks like a leaf. I have leaves. The impression of leaves is on there. I'm just filling in the background now. Now, you could also start this way. You could fill in the background first. A lot of painters choose to do that because it acts as underlayer and creates a base for the rest of the painting. I very often start that way. This way this painting because I wanted to do this placeholder in the middle first, I started a different way. There's a variety of ways you can start a painting, start or finish a painting. All I'm doing is just adding a little bit of green, little bit of white, a little bit of green gold filling in. I'm going to do that throughout these little spots. I'm not going to worry if the paint gets onto the leaf. Not going to worry about that. If it happens, then that's what happens. It's okay. Adding a little bit. I'm using the palo gold just sporadically. I'm sorry, the fallo green. I keep saying phallo gold because it's green gold. Is green, this darker green. Using it sporadically because I want the darker greens to be these main leaves, I just want the rest to be part of the background. Blending all this in lightly. The fluid acrylic works really nice for this, it goes over evenly and then to add depth, I'm using regular body white. I like mixing those two things in paintings. I think it works really nicely, both in texture and color blending. Putting a little down here, just filling in, just filling in color. Not worried about the definition of the leaves because this is all meant to be a background layer. All of this is going to blend into the background. These are what's going to stand out, of course, once we get our petals, that's what's going to stand out. That's the process for this particular painting. So I'm going to finish up the rest of this painting. Same type of technique, starting with green gold, adding a bit of palo green. I wipe off my paintbrush and add a little bit of white. I just use that white to blend it right on the canvas. 6. (4) Adhere Petals To Canvas: This is entirely dry. And these little scraps are all dry completely. And I have my inspiration picture, and I'm going to just put it off to the side here. To remind me why I'm doing this and to give me the inspiration to see what it looks like and to take my ideas from there. And for this step, I'm also going to add one more thing, which is vinyl gloves. These are the type that I use. I get them at the hardware store in a big box of 100. And the reason that I'm putting gloves on for this is when I'm using this regular gel gloss with, you know, paint brush that I'm going to throw away, when I'm adding the papers to this and moving them around, the gel gloss can get very sticky and very hard to get off your hands. And, you know, if I'm moving them around, I don't want that to deter me. I want to just wear gloves so I can just throw the gloves away and get on with my day and not worry about sticky hands and all that. It's up to you if you want to do that. I'm going to open this up. Now, for this, we're adding these little scraps all the way around, like so, right? And we're creating the petals for our sunflower. Now, you can do this on you can do it in a dry run and just place these here and there and see where you'd want them. I like to work organically and just kind of create as I go. I'm not going to do that. But what I'm going to look for in these scraps, I had some that were just the black and white. I had some that had this craft paper look, and then I had some that were painted, and I had some that were ink. I'm going to look for a balance of them as I place these on here. What I want to do first is just get a little bit of gel gloss. Now normally what I would do is put gloss on a canvas to prep it for these little scraps of paper. But I don't want to do that. I don't want to put it all the way around here because there might be spots where I'm not putting something on there. I want to just wait until I know where I'm going to put it and then put the gloss down and you'll see what I mean in a second. I'm going to start with this one. It's just a plain music sheet that I ripped and I like the idea since it's longer, maybe putting it that way. Like that idea. I'm going to do that, and I'm going to brush a little bit of gel gloss on my canvas. Then I'm going to brush the back. You'll see this is another reason why I like wearing gloves for this. Brush it on the back of my paper and place it down. Okay. Now for this, this is going to be the top layer. So you don't necessarily need to put your gel gloss over the top. Unless you feel like there's some sticking out that might peak up might come up a little or peak out. I'm just going to not put gel gloss over the top of my papers for this round because it's the final piece of it and it's going to be the top of the painting. This is a real long piece and I like the idea of putting it there. Let's see here. Puts put my gel gloss. Wait along here. We don't have to get it exact. I'm going to put the go gloss a little bit. On the back and place it down. Now on this, I have this little tiny I have actually this end that is coming up. That's what I mean by peeking out. I have that one that's coming up. I'm going to put some over the top right there just to help it stay secure at this end, I have the same thing happening because it's very delicate paper. I'm going to put a little bit over the top to help it. Stay. So we have two petals already. How cool is that? So I really like these brown ones, and I like them in the base, I think. You know, I like the idea of putting these down maybe right there and right there. So I'm going to do that. There's something about this brown craft paper in general that is really attractive to me to create with. And then when it comes on something like, you know, a food bag, because that's what we got this at a cure takeout bag, that type of thing. And this I will put over the top because I got a lot of edges on this one peeking out. Wow. This little craft paper I did not want to stay down, but it will now. I like the idea of using different things in our art, especially things that we could consider garbage. Because this isn't a good feeling. You take something that's considered throwaway, useless and you find use for it. I love that. Then you create something new from it, even better. This is that sheet that was junk mail, I had a little bit on here, so I put paint over it. Let's see where that might go. I like the idea of putting it there, but it's a little bit long, it goes off the canvas. Let me rip a little bit of this off so that it'll stick better, stay on. How about right there. This is very trial and error. You work slowly. Again, I find this very relaxing placing all this down. Little by little, you just work and see which pieces fit. Don't discard the artistic choices you're making here. Every one of these choices is an artistic choice. This isn't just like we're pasting things down. You're making choices with what you put down on your art, with how it's going to look. There's a lot of things that are going on here and that's why art is so unique all the time and different from person to person because we're all going to make different choices with this and we're going to add our own take in our own personality. Which is what makes it unique and interesting. I'm just going over any edge that I feel is sticking up. I'm not really brushing the gel medium over the top of every piece. I when I see some edges sticking up, I brush them down. Now, this is a piece of scrap paper that was it had leaves on it, so I left it that way. I like the idea of putting that on just as it is, and I like the idea of doing that right there, I think. I'm going to turn this around though. I like that. Maybe right there. Oh, I like that. So I'm going to do that. Okay. All right. Put that down and have these little edges peeking out again. The gel medium works really wonderfully for that. I'm gonna put the gel medium down on the edge. And what I'm doing is varying the types of paper, the balance of color because each of them have a little bit of different yellows and the different designs and all that. For this, I have a music sheet that I've painted with yellow, and I have a plain music sheet here. I don't know I think I'm going to put it over here, just to spread it out. I'm going to rip this edge because it's a little harsh. It's a straight edge, right like that. I'm already I'm already loving how these rough petals are beginning to take shape and really create this look of those rough sunflower petals. That sunflower is just such an amazing inspiration for us, I think. This was the cookbook page that I had inked on. It's real vibrant and it allows the wording to show through. I love that. I'm just looking for a place for it. I think it would be great right there. Now, I'm not worried about going over any of these. In fact, I will because sunflowers the petals, they're not just lined up one by one. Some of them are in front of each other. You know, on our inspiration picture. Some of them are in front of each other. They're bunched together. So if that happens on here, that's totally fine. Since I have one of these plain music sheets, I have another one and I think I will put it right here. I think it would be good there. As far as what to apply this gel medium with, I like to use either a foam brush or just a throwaway brush like this. Whatever works best for you. Okay. This is a delicate little piece. There we go. If you need to rip off a piece, as you're placing like I am, feel free. I've got this black and white one. I think I like that right there. You can tear it and get it to fit however you need it to go. It is very fun though, to take something unexpected and create art out of it, I think. I always enjoy that when I see people do that. That little guy. I'm just going to keep going here. What else we got? There's some words on. I like it this way, I think. Okay. That there. It's taking shape. You'll notice as this gets covered up, the backroom gets covered up, these leaves are probably going to mostly be covered up. I'm fine with all that because these were all the placement for this main sunflower. So this is the scrapbook page that I had scrapbook paper that had the brown on it, and I like the idea of a little bit of brown in there too. I'm going to add that I think right there. Can have different levels of color in your petals. Doesn't all have to be yellow. I've been in sunflower patches where there's a vibrant orange one that stands out. I love to see that. It's just like, wow, where did you come from? Some of the petals are lighter yellow, some of them are darker. Here is the magazine page and it is covered with paint. I'm going to see where I would like to put that probably right there. Seemed like it wanted to go. And now that this is complete and I think it is. I like how it's filled in. I like how there's some wonky petals that come way down. I like the balance of color and texture, all the different design elements that we have on there. I like the balance as I'm saying that, I think I want one more yellowy one right here, of course. As you take a final assessment to your picture, and I like that one right there, I think. So it off. One more yellow one right here. I think that would finish it. So do that. Take a look at it. Take a final look, take an assessment. Oops. What you think. Take a look to see if you have any, you know, paper sticking up or kind of curling up. You can tap it down with a little bit of gel medium. Now, if you notice on your painting, if you've got the gel medium in this brown area and it looks like there's gel medium on there, it will dry clear. So don't worry about that. Um I got a glue here. So take a look, you know, hold it out from you, hold the painting out a little bit from you and get an idea, you know, that way, get the distance to see Okay, that's something I like or not like when you're looking at a picture this closely all the time, it changes your perspective. So put it aside and take a look at it if you want to see, let it dry and see how you feel about it then. You can always add more petals to it if you feel like there aren't enough, if you don't like something. That's the really great part about it. Right now, as it stands, I really love the look of this and love what's happening with it. So I'm going to let it dry because you need to give it a good amount of time to dry, and then I'm going to take another look at it, and then I'm going to just do one final touch on the centers here. But other than that, I feel like this painting is complete, but we're going to let it dry first. 7. (5) Finishing Touches: Nice and dry. I gave it really several hours. You know it's dry when you touch the edges where you had that gel medium and it does not feel sticky at all. So we're almost complete with this, but I want to do some final touches on it. Right now, I love the ragged look of all of these little petals and what I want to do is add just a little bit of shading to the center. In our inspiration photo, you can tell there's a little bit of a dark shading or shadow where the petals connect. I want to add that. I also want to put a little bit of detail on the leaves so that this looks like a connected flower. We've got our background, which is blending in the background and not the foreground, which I like. Then we have these pieces which come out on the foreground. For this, I'm using incidentally, just a regular pencil. I just got it at a back to school sale. Back to School sales are wonderful for artists. Find lots of stuff there. Don't ignore them. When you see a back to school sale, see what they have. I'm just going over the edges of the paper and this round circle that we had painted with the quinacridone and the brown. I'm just going over it just to add some shading, just roughly going over it. This gives it a rough, homemade look that I think goes really well with the mixed media that we have on here. All goes well together. So all the way around. So it's very subtle, but I like that. Now I want to go around the petals and I want to add some of that same definition with the pencil. Again, it's going to be subtle. This isn't so it's just to add just a little bit more definition. That's all it's doing. I like to add things like a graphite pencil or sometimes I use a Sabilo pencil for things like this. I'm just going around just the very edges. If you use something like a stable pencil, it actually is formulated to be on paint like this, it'll be darker and you'll be able to blend more. But I actually just liked the idea of doing a regular number two pencil like we had in school. Just a simple pencil. I use different types of pencils in my artwork. My graphite pencil is somewhere here. I use that quite often. But there's something fun about drawing with a big school pencil, isn't there? Somehow I think it fits with this project. Just going around. Again, all these little details reading, they're subtle. We're not changing the picture at all, but I like these subtle details can sometimes just bring it all together. Doesn't take very long. And I'm going over wherever I had a raw white edge, I'm going over that with a pencil. It's a personal choice. You can leave yours white if you'd like. I decided to keep it uniform, so they all had the same edge. Again, all these choices we make, these are gosh, my arm keeps sticking there. These are all artistic choices, so you can make a different one if you choose and that's fine. Okay. I goes really fast. Now we're at the beginning. It's just a subtle detail, but I like that it pulls everything together. Now as I'm looking at the leaves, I want to do a little bit of detail there too. Again, I'm going to add a pencil, but it's going to be subtle. But it helps connect these two things. I'm going to go along the edges of the leaves and I'm going to put a little veining work in there with the pencil. When you're doing a picture like this and it's got a lot of different elements. As this one does, it has paper and different papers and ink and paint and different kinds of paint. When you're doing something like this at the end, just something simple that can unify everything, it really trains the eye to see it as one cohesive picture. It's a subtle thing in art. Color does that, linework can do that. Little details like this can do that. And that's it. That's all I wanted to do. So here we go. And there's our little collage sunflower.