Drawing With Scissors: Modern Folk Inspired Botanical Collage

1. Welcome!: There is a playfulness and freedom to working with collage, which allows us to explore ideas without the fear and permanence which can come from working directly onto the page. Hey, my name is Mel, and I'm an artist and educator, and I love to create colorful and playful art, which is full of joy. Collage has allowed me to loosen up, let go of perfection, and has really helped me out of periods of creative block. It's the thing I always reach for when I'm feeling uninspired or overwhelmed because it's such a low pressure way to create art. Today, I'm going to share with you one of my favorite collage techniques, combining color, mark making, and playfully drawing with scissors to create beautiful, folk inspired botanical collages. This class is suitable for all levels. You don't need to have any drawing experience, but if you're an experienced artist, I think you'll also have fun, too. Drawing with scissors takes away an element of control, which can open up a creative way of image that would just not be possible working traditionally with pens and pencils. Okay, so if you're ready, let's get started. M. 2. Class Project And Resources: In this class, I'm going to walk you through my process for creating a folk inspired botanical collage, which combines color, shape, and pattern to create really unique and eye catching images. I'll be walking you through one example from start to finish, but I often create these little artworks in series. So feel free to create one, two, or 20 collages, depending on how hooked you get on creating them. You can follow along with my example in the class or use it as a framework and adapt it to your own style and materials. If you'd like to share your class project, I invite you to take a photo or scan in your collage. When you're ready, head to the Projects and Resources tab and click Create Project. You can add a cover photo and title, but don't forget to upload your photos to the actual body of the project. This is also where you can add supporting text, telling us how you found the process. Provided alongside the class, you will find a class resource PDF, which includes some composition references, some sketching guides, and mark making references, which you might find helpful whilst working through the course. If you would like some additional resources to support your college making, you're welcome to visit my website and download my free botanical college workbook. Finally, don't forget to take a look around the project gallery at other students projects to encourage others, and of course, to fill your own creative well. You can really make someone's day by leaving a positive comment on their project. So don't miss that opportunity to spread a little bit of joy. Next, we'll go over the tools and materials you're going to need, so see you in the next video. 3. Tools + Materials: The materials you're going to need for this class are pretty straightforward. You'll need a selection of collar papers. Now, for me, color is really important. So I like to work with colored papers. If you're curious, the brand I like to use is called Canford paper. They come in a range of gorgeous colors, but any colored paper you have will be great. If you don't have any colored papers, you could use paint or ink or markers to get a colored base to work on, or you might enjoy working in black and white, which can be totally awesome, too. In which case, just some plain white paper will work. Remember, we are going to be drawing marks and patterns onto the collage paper later. So you're going to be changing it up. You'll need some paper for your background. This could be a color, or it could be plain white. It's totally personal preference, and you may not really want to decide that until later. That is the great thing about collage. You can just change your mind and be flexible, so there's no need to decide that right away. You'll need a selection of art materials to make marks with. Now, don't stress too much about having enough. You can get a great little piece from just having one pen or one crayon to make marks with. But it can be a really nice opportunity to try out different materials you have that are maybe ing at the back of your materials cupboard that you haven't got to know yet. Just gather a bunch of different materials together and we'll narrow it down when we take a look at color palettes. Of course, you are going to need some scissors to cut out your collar shapes with, and you'll also need some glue. Any paper glue will be fine. I like to use a simple glue stick just because I find it easy to work with without getting glue where I don't want it. You'll also need a pencil, an erasor, and a few sheets of scrap paper just to help us out during the planning stage. All right, so now we have our materials gathered. We can take a look at some examples of botanical folk art to help us get inspired. Join me in the next video when you're ready. 4. Gathering Inspiration: So what is foc art and why are we using it to inspire these collages? Focart is a loose umbrella term that describes handcrafted objects, including painting, sculpture, furniture, basketry, or utensils. And traditionally, foc art was made by artists who were self taught or learned to trade through local communities rather than being formally trained, which gives Focart its distinctive stylized look. Styles vary hugely, but in a nutshell, you might expect to see bold colors, decorative designs, flattened perspective, and strong forms. These are all visual traits which lend themselves perfectly to working with collage, which is why we are using it as our inspiration. Put together a pinterest board full of examples you're welcome to take a look at and use to help you create your own mood board if that is something which you enjoy doing. But let's take a look at a few specific examples together to see if we can draw out a few design rules. One of the first things you'll be struck by is that in most but not all cases, focart botanicals are symmetrical. Sometimes you'll notice that things aren't perfectly symmetrical. There are often little playful tweaks in the symmetry where things might be interrupted by a little asymmetrical detail, or the design itself may be very symmetrical, but the hand crafted nature of it may show small little differences. These are not machine made images after all, and that is a big part of their charm and why I love them so much. Next thing to note is that focart botanicals are simplified. So we are not aiming for realistic interpretations here. And this is also why they work so beautifully in collage. Often, you may find a flower simplified all the way down to just a circle. But even the more complex forms are very much simplified symbols of flowers and leaves. You'll spot a lot of simple geometric shapes in focart botanicals. Look out for circles, semicircles, tear drops, triangles, and simplified leaf shapes. You'll often find patterns in foc art. Sometimes these are simplified representations of the textures, like lines representing the veins on a leaf or dots representing the seeds in a sunflower head, for example, But you'll also find a lot of what I'd call decorative embellishments, like circles or dots which accentuate the shapes, but don't necessarily represent something you'd actually find on a real flower. One of the things I love about folkar is the colors. You'll often find at least one very saturated color in the palette. And often colors can be quite unexpected, too. So leaves don't need to be green and are often more unrealistic colors like pink or blue, which just makes them so much fun. Black and White also works beautifully in Focart botanicals, and black and white paired with one really highly saturated color can give you an amazing result, too. In the next video, we're going to use these visual characteristics to sketch a few ideas to plan our collage. See there. 5. Sketching Ideas: Now we have a few ideas about what focart botanicals look like. We can use this information to do a few quick sketches on some scrap paper. These sketches are going to be very loose and rough. The joy of collage is that it just kind of unfolds as you start cutting, but it helps to have just a reasonable idea of the kind of shape we're going to make before we start, mainly so that we create the right size pieces of textured paper to cut out. I find that it often helps to start with a circle with a straight line a bit like a lollly pop and build out from that shape, or not, if you want to keep it super simple. So I'm just going to grab something circular to draw around. Go to press quite hard just so that it shows up okay for you on camera, but these can be super rough and sketchy and loose. Okay, so There's a starting point. In the class resource, there are a few composition references and sketching guides, which might be helpful to use as starting points for your sketches. So don't forget to download that if you'd find it helpful. One really simple way to begin is just to use the circle shape and add a few layers to it, which could contain different colors and patterns to add some interest. Something you often see with folks style flowers is what I call a little crown on top. So some little sticks with circles on the end, which represent, I guess, the stamen of a flower. Alternatively, we could approach the shape with a more upward angle to the flower. Remember, these flower shapes are highly simplified and used flattened perspective, which is good because we're going to need to cut out these shapes with scissors, so we want to keep them reasonably simple. This could either be just with one shape or we could add a few layers of different colors into it, which can create a really gorgeous layered effect. The other flower style, which can be really fun to work with is something more simple like the way you might represent a doodle of something like a daisy or sunflower with curved petals. And again, this could have some more layers inside it to make it more interesting. Some other variations on this, which can be really nice are a kind of seed pod style botanicals. So that would feel kind of like a circle or sphere with a little crown on top. What works really beautifully with this is to add some little embellishments into the center of the circle. Don't go too detailed though, because remember, each of these shapes we're going to be cutting out. Keep it simple. There will be opportunity later to add more detail. Another really nice variation is to cut your circle in half. You could either leave that as is for something really simple, or you may enjoy adding more layers, maybe a scalloped edge to look like petals, maybe some of those little dots or some other way to add a little stylized twist. You can be really playful here. Remember, these types of folktyle botanicals don't need to look realistic. The other thing we can experiment with is sketching some different leaf shapes. These can go from looking pretty leaf like right down to simplified tear drop or circle shapes. You can be really playful with Focart two and have a mix of different leaf styles on one stem. Typically, you will find they are symmetrically placed, but there are no rules here, so go with whatever appeals to you. Something else it's fun to experiment with is the angle of the leaves. They could be pointing up a little or they could be going straight out to the sides. This is exactly the type of thing we can play with as we start cutting out shapes. So don't worry about getting your sketch perfect at this stage because everything is flexible with collage. All you really need to know is roughly the type of flower shape you're aiming for. All right, so now it's your turn. Play around with a few sketches and try out some different shapes. But remember, don't get bogged down in details. Things will get tweaked and adjusted as we put the collages together. So at this stage, we just want a rough sense of the shapes we're aiming for. Next up, we're going to be picking our color palette. So make sure you have your supplies to hand. Then join me in the next video when you're ready. 6. Choosing A Color Palette: Okay, so the next task is to choose our color palette. You may be, in some ways limited in your color palette by the materials you have available to you, or you might be feeling completely overwhelmed by choice right now if you have a lot of options. So here are some rules you can use to help you pick your colors. Limit your color palette to a maximum of five colors. Now, that includes the materials you're drawing with and the collarg papers. So if, for example, you have a blue paper and a blue marker or crayon or pencil or whatever that's the same kind of color. That just counts as one color. Limiting your palette to a maximum of five colors will just help keep everything looking cohesive, and too many colors in your palette can feel really overwhelming once we start combining everything together with mark making. Rule of thumb in your color palette is that there should be some contrast. Now, the best way to imagine contrast is if you took a black and white photo of your colors. If they all at the same shade of gray, then there isn't enough contrast there. So you need at least one color, which has a pretty deep tonal value paired with something lighter. For example, if I was using this blue, then a color like this together with it is going to give me some really nice contrast. Remember that black and white as a combination is awesome, and that can look really gorgeous with just one vibrant color, or maybe two if you're feeling fruity. There you have instant contrast, and I'll bet you have some white paper and a black pen. Now, in terms of the materials you're going to use to draw with, avoid anything which smudges, because it will be really frustrating to work with when you come to start handling and cutting out shapes because your gorgeous mark making will smudge and it will end up where you don't want it. Don't worry about choosing the right colors for botanicals. Remember, folktyle botanicals often use unusual colors, so you don't have to have a green in there. Go with the colors which feel fun and joyful and are just pulling you in today. So let's have a look at the colored papers that I've got to hand today. I haven't got a massive selection, but quite a few things to pick from. So I love working with this yellow. It's my favorite color. If you've seen any of my other online classes, you've probably seen me use this color before. And that is definitely one that I would like to use. So the yellow I'm actually really I know we don't need to have a green in there, but I'm really feeling like this very kind of vibrant green is kind of pulling me in today as well. It feels like really nice and full of energy. So I think that is going to be one of my colors. And it's also a nice darker tonal value, so it's contrasting to the yellow pretty well. So I don't need to worry now about contrast. Also loving this blue. That's a really nice selection. I might just pick one more color. I don't think I'm going to have as many as five in my palette, but maybe four is enough. Think maybe something on the warmer spectrum. I quite like this sort of Cory. Let's see. Yeah, that's a really nice selection, actually. All right, so I've just pulled out these colored papers that I want to work with. So I've got a selection of materials that I can sort of put with them. I have recently been exploring these little they are arena neon color aqua crayons. They're not the kind of material that I often use for drawing, but I'm really enjoying the kind of different marks and textures that they're giving me. And there's not in my usual way of drawing, there's not a lot that I can use them for. So they're quite nice to use just for this kind of mark making. And I've got a couple of the colors here that will go with what I have. So which one is closer? I think that is almost on the pink spectrum. So I'll call that one a pink. And I have a I've got a Posca marker that is a very close match to that green. So I'll choose that maybe, and I've got some Yeah. I've got a couple of crayons that I can use as well. If I want to add those in, there's a pale blue. So I've just pulled out a stack of my materials that I have that match the colored papers that I have chosen. I might not use all of these materials. This is actually quite a lot to work from. But it's just good to know that I have those to play with if I want them. In the color palette that I've chosen, I've got four colors, and this deep green is the one that's got a much darker tonal value, so that's giving me a nice contrast with the other colors that I've chosen that are a bit lighter. All right, so now it's your turn to review the materials you have available to you and pick your color palette. Remember, you don't need to choose as many as five colors. Use that as a maximum. If you want to color some white paper, pause the video and go ahead and do that now, then join me in the next video once you have your materials ready in your chosen color palette. See there when you're ready. 7. Fun With Mark Making: Before we begin playing with our materials, we need to have an idea of the size we want our finished collage to be so that we make collage papers which are big enough. This will depend on three things. The amount of collage papers you have to play with. Of course, less paper means you might need to make your collage smaller, but if you have loads of sheets, it could be bigger. You also need to consider how fiddly you want the cutting out to be, because if you go for a small collage, say something around this size for your background, that is going to make those shapes quite fiddly to cut out because they'll be very, very small. So think about what feels most comfory for you cutting wise. The other thing to bear in mind is how you like to explore mark making. If you're someone who likes to make really big, kind of sweeping lines and patterns and marks, then you might want your collage to be a bit bigger. So maybe something around this size for your background would work or maybe even larger. Whereas, if you're like drawing in a really kind of detailed, finer way, then scale your collage down to maybe something a bit smaller like this. Going to be making mine A five size, which is roughly six by 8 ". That's a pretty manageable size to work with, for me, both in terms of the amount of materials I have, the size of the shapes I need to cut out, and also how I like to play with materials. But pick a size to work at, which suits you. So I've decided I'm going to go for this sketch to base my collage on, which is a bit seed pod inspired. So I know my largest shape, which is the sort of head of the seed pod. Is going to be a little smaller than half the size of my collage. Now, that's really helpful to know so that I can make the most of my colored papers, so I can do a few different textures on each sheet of paper. Because that's the largest shape in the collage, that is going to be the kind of dominating color of that particular collage. So I'm just going to pick the color which most calls to me today, which I think is going to be this sort of Cory color. Now, in terms of the marks you make on the papers, it can be really loose and expressive like scribbles or something more formal if that feels right. It's really just to add a little extra texture and interest to the overall image. And it's also just quite fun to play with materials. If you find yourself getting stuck for what kind of marks to make on your paper. There's a mark making references section in the class resource, just to give you a few ideas to get you going. Now I've created some marks for my largest shape. I can create a few more patterned areas on my collage papers to use for different parts of my collage. Now, I don't know yet which colors are going where, but I do know that I've created the largest shape. So now I can create pieces around half that size for all the other bits of my collage. So I'll explore some different patterns and materials now just to give me lots to play with. Something to bear in mind, it's always a good idea to make your patterned areas a bit bigger than you know you want them to be just so that you have pattern going continuously all the way to the edge of your shapes. It's also a good idea to leave a few little blank spaces on your collage paper because you may need something quite specific later on once we start putting them together, so always leave some blank paper to play with later. I had a little bit of an ink. Not a catastrophe, but you know how paint markers can sometimes splat out lots of ink. This is the great thing about working with collage. When things happen that kind of seemingly go wrong, it doesn't matter because we haven't used it yet. So I'm just using those kind of big blobs of ink to kind of uses my material to keep making some patterns. And you never know sometimes these things can end up actually like, really happy accidents where you want to use that for something. So there's no real problem when things like that happen. Okay, that's probably enough for now for that sheet. I'm gonna leave that and move on to some of my other colors. So, I've just created a load of different textures and patterns on each of my different color papers with a mix of my different materials, keeping everything within that color palette of four colors. So notice that I haven't filled the whole paper on any of them. I probably will need to make some more textures and patterns later, but I just want to see how I get started with these, and then I'll add more later. So, now it's your turn. Fill your collage papers with marks and patterns and have fun. Don't forget to leave a few spaces free as you might want to create specific pieces later on. In the next video, we'll start drawing with our scissors and cutting out paper shapes. So join me there when you're ready. 8. Cutting Out Shapes: Okay, now comes the fun part. I know that most people really want to draw out a shape in pencil and then cut it out. But please resist this urge. One of the super fun things about collage is that you can draw with your scissors, and the whole charm of it is that you will end up with shapes which are more expressive and organic than you would achieve by meticulously drawing out your shapes first. The other aspect of drawing pencil shapes, which can be problematic is that we do not want to be left with any pencil marks on your collage because it just really spoils the effect. If this feels intimidating, then remind yourself that nothing is permanent. This is the joy of collage. If we mess up, we can just cut another one. Something else to bear in mind is that as you begin cutting your shapes, it's easy to make a shape smaller and refine it that way, but you can't make it bigger once it's cut. Start with a version of your shape, which is a little bigger than you want the finished thing to be, and then gradually trim it down until it's about the size you want. Going to glue anything down at this stage. So just start laying pieces down on your background paper, and also don't worry yet about whether this will in fact be your background paper because we might change that later too. So, this seed pod is the design that I've decided to use as my guide. Now, I intentionally didn't create a color plan on my sketch because I enjoy making the decisions about which papers to use where as I go through the process. This bit is kind of intuitive and playful, kind of like a fun puzzle. Once you've started combining your colors together with mark making, you get these different effects anyway, which you can't always predict at the planning stage. So I generally find that even if I have planned out my colors, I always change my mind later anyway. So I'm going to start with my biggest shape, and that is where I made this large area of pattern for that. So I'm going to start by roughly cutting it out. Have to be a bit careful about my green ink there just because it might still be a bit wet. So I'm really just using the background to figure out roughly the size and shape. So I'm going to just try to create a sort of circular ish shape. And what might do is actually So I've just cut out my patterned areas very loosely just so that I can kind of use them a bit like a palette. It's a bit easier to see what I have like that. So I'm going to now have a look at what is going to go on top of this. Obviously, to get the contrast, it wouldn't work very well if I use the same colored paper again, so I'm going to use something different. So I quite like the yellows. Let's see. Yeah. I think that's a bit bigger than I wanted it, so I'll just make it a bit smaller. That's what I mean about start big. And then if you just reduce size, then it's quite easily done, whereas making it bigger is a bit more of a headache. So I quite like the yellow one there. I wonder if I have enough to do the same at the top. This is why it's good to have all this spare paper because it's quit. I think I'd quite like to use the same pattern, the top and bottom. Okay. I feel like there's a shape missing now, so I'm just going to add on a little one. No, I'm just testing. Am I going to use the same color for this bit that sticks up or a different one? Hm. I quite like the blue. Maybe I'm going to replace the top part with the blue. Let's try it and see. I can always change my mind later. So I'll try cutting it all in one that shape and see how that looks. H. So now that I've cut it, I feel like there's not enough contrast between these two shapes. So actually, I think I want to do it with the yellow, again, just so that it has a bit more contrast against that pink. So I need to just make a bit more of that pattern. So I'm just going to use that that was the right shape and just cut around it because I know it's the shape that I want. Wasn't happy with the contrast, so I'm going to use that. Yeah. That does look better. So let's have a look at my sketch. Let's have a think about these shapes in the middle. So I don't want to use yellow again because that would be a bit too much yellow, I think. I need to either use the blue or green. Now that is quite a good combination. That's a really nice strong contrast against that. I'm going to give that a go. I'm just going to cut these kind of tear drop shapes out. Again, I'll start bigger than I think they're going to be That's maybe about the right size, actually. Okay, so reasonably happy so far. Got some nice contrast going on there. So I maybe want to add it like to get some blue in there. But the blue is not contrasting enough. With that part. So actually, maybe I'll do the stem and the leaves with blue, that might be really nice. So you'll notice that the way that I'm creating the collage and composing it. The proportions are not quite the same as this. I think the seed pod head is a bit bigger and the leaves and stem are a bit shorter. I'm quite happy about that. When you do your sketch, it's really just to help you get a kind of a starting point. Doesn't need to look exactly like it. Quite like the blue, the blue stem, that's quite nice. So, I want to make this yellow shape a little bit smaller, I think. I'm just going to cut a bit off. Because I'd quite like to have that layered effect of more than one. Adds a little extra something. I'm also going to add some of these little circles in there. I feel like Let's try these little off cuts because they only need to be tiny. Let's try some blue with yellow. So again, I'm making them quite big. I might cut them down smaller in a little while just because it's easier to make them smaller and bigger. Before you start sticking things down, it's quite difficult to get to refined. We'll start refining things after we start gluing as well. Yeah, I quite like the blue there, and then for the two in between, I need something that stands out a bit more. I'm wondering about maybe another dark green that's got these dots on. Yeah, quite like that. Okay. So these balls that are either side, they're just sort of, I don't know, little representations of more flowers. I think I'd like to use more of the Corly color because it's only there at the moment. And I might actually use a bit of the coral in the leaves. We'll see. We'll see. So I'm going to shorten this, I think to make the leaves come off it. I'm going to use these two colors together. I'm going to just give that a little bit of a gentle curve so that it's sort of following that. It's a bit too big at the moment, but I'm going to just cut it a bit smaller, refine it down and make it a bit more leaf like. Okay, jazzy leaves. That's looking really nice. Now, I'm going to add these little stick sticks on top. For me, right now, I feel as though I need those to be dark green because there's not enough dark green on here to give us all the contrast. You'll notice I am slightly running out of space on my college paper background. It doesn't matter. Remember, we haven't actually chosen the backgrounds yet exactly, but it's just to help us put them together, and I might cut things down smaller as well. So sometimes I might change my mind about a piece if it just doesn't feel right, and this often comes down to contrast again. If two pieces of paper next to each other have the exact same tonal value. They can just feel like they're not quite working. That was the case when I tried that blue piece at the top. I'm trying to alternate the amount of tonal value so that all the individual shapes I'm adding feel clear and defined. I'm not going to stick anything down yet and I might actually cut the shapes down and refine them a bit further. At this stage, we just want to have all the pieces. Okay, now it's your turn to begin cutting out your shapes from your collage paper. In the next video, we'll assemble all our pieces together, so join me there when you're ready. 9. Putting The Pieces Together: Now we have our shapes cut out. There are a few decisions we need to make before we stick everything down. First, we'll make sure we're happy with the position and arrangement of the shapes and secure a few bits with glue. Now, depending on the shape of your flower, you may like to just have a little play with adjusting the position of a few little bits. Even very tiny adjustments can make quite a big impact. Let's see what happens if I just move these bits in the middle. There's not a lot that I can play with the movement of particularly on here. I can move these up and down. I can't really move these that much. I can change the angle of these, but it's maybe just really minor adjustments like if I just make the angle of those slightly more upward pointing. Maybe slightly further spaced out. Yeah, that makes a bit of a difference, actually. If you have a stem and leaves, you might also like to play with the angle your leaves are at, and also whether they're all the same size or whether there's some variation. Once you're happy with how your shapes are arranged, we can begin to glue a few pieces together. And my advice is to start by gluing the smaller pieces down onto the larger pieces first. Don't stick anything onto the background just yet. So when you start gluing, make sure you apply your glue on a bit of scrap paper well away from your collage. It's a very obvious thing to say, but it's so easy to get over excited with this part of the process and end up with glue everywhere. Believe me, I do it all the time and then regret it. So once you've secured a few of the smallest pieces down, we can decide whether we want to keep this background paper or switch it for something else. So you can stay with a simple white paper or you could decide to use a colored paper, and this could even be a color which is not in your color palette, actually. And sometimes choosing something quite different often works pretty well to give the whole piece a bit of contrast. Generally, I find that using a very deep color with a dark tonal value work quite well to make the vibrant colors that I often work with really pop, but something very subtle can work beautifully if that's more your style. The other thing that you can decide is whether you want to stick with the same size of background or whether you want to scale it up. So I often really like to compose my collages on quite a small background because I find it just limits the overwhelm that can come from a much larger background. But if I try perhaps just a slightly larger background. It's quite nice just to introduce a bit more space around my collage. So I'm just going to try a few different colors of paper that I have leftover just to see if there's a color that I prefer over my white background. So I do really like this very deep kind of royal blue that I've got in my pile of colored papers. The one thing that I've noticed though is that where I've got those dark green little dots on the top, there's not quite enough contrast and they're kind of getting lost in the background. So what I might do is actually just cut a few new little circles in I think the light blue and switch those in. And I think that's just going to make it pop a bit more against the background. So I'm going to now stick the whole collage down very carefully on this blue. So don't forget, plain white can also be a great choice. Have a play with any papers you have. And then once you've decided on your background, glue everything down securely. Being careful, of course, not to get glue where you don't want it. Okay, so now it's your turn. Arrange your paper shapes, decide on your background color, and then glue all your pieces down. In the next video, we'll take a look at some ways to add a few little final touches, which can just add a little extra sparkle. So join me in the next video when you're ready. 10. Finishing Touches: Alright, so hopefully, we have a gorgeous looking little collage now. There are a couple of things that you can do at this stage if you want to, just to add a little extra sparkle, but it's totally optional. If you've made something and you're like, Ah, no, dot want to touch it, then by all means, it could be completely finished. Now, one thing which can be really nice to add is a little more pattern or mark making on top of our collage pieces to accentuate the shapes or textures. For example, parallel lines are something I often add on leaves to give the feel of the texture, and that often works well on petals too, just to make them feel more connected to the botanical element we're creating. You'll need to make sure that if you want to do that, you're using a material which will stand out against the color and texture you have underneath. But this can also be a great solution for increasing the tonal value in an area if you feel it's lacking in contrast. Something which can work really nicely if it appeals to you is to use the color of your background paper to add some additional textures or patterns. If you've opted for something with quite a dark tonal value, such as this dark blue that I've picked, or maybe you've picked a dark green or even a black. If you're working on white, though, I would recommend that you stick with your initial color palette and just find a sufficiently contrasting color from within that. So in my example, I have got a posca pen that is about the same color as my background. So I'm just going to test it on my scrap paper just because they do have a tendency to blob out ink sometimes when you start using them. So I don't want to add too much on here, but something from my sketch, as I was doing it, which I haven't really got on here, is these kind of fanned lines on the top and bottom here, which I thought might be quite nice to add. And there's enough contrast with what's underneath for me to do that. So I just thought I would add a few little lines. I've already kind of got the line textures on my leaves. So I don't really feel as though I need those there. So, the other thing I've found for me, there's a bit of a lack of contrast in these circles in the middle. So I'm actually going to add going to draw on top this sort of deep blue to do a smaller circle there. I think it's just going to help to accentuate that shape. So it's a great little technique to use if you just need to I don't know, boost some contrast in an area. I feel as though I've got the same thing happening here. So I'm going to just add some more dots, I think. So I think I'm just going to add just a little line up the center of the leaf here like a vein. Don't feel the need to add lots of linear textures just because I already have them on there, but feel like it would just be nice to introduce a bit of blue there. And fact, these little balls on the side. I think I'm just going to add a little bit more texture there. They've got the pink on them. So nice kind of circular textures, but it's quite low in contrast. So I just feel as though adding a tiny bit more. I'm just going to make it look really finished. So another thing which can be nice to add at this stage is any additional foci style patterns to embellish your collage further, and you could do this either by drawing or by cutting out a few tinier paper shapes. It's much easier to do this at this stage. Once the min collage is stuck down, just because it can all be very fiddly when everything is moving about. Examples of what I often add on our tiny circles, and sometimes I'll use something a bit jazzy like a gold paper or gold pen for these little embellishments because it just adds a little extra flourish to the whole thing, and I'm also a bit of a sucker for metallics too. It may be that you feel there's a particular color you need to add in a part of your collage to make it feel balanced. And this is why collage is so brilliant. You can try that out, lay a shape on your collage to see if you like it before committing to it by gluing it down. So have a play around with any final little embellishments you may like to add. You can revisit your initial planning sketch to try out some ideas if you find that helpful. Now it's your turn. Take a look at your collage and determine if there are any areas you'd like to embellish further with more drawing or smaller paper shapes, or if you just want to increase the contrast in some areas to make them pop a bit more. In the next video, I'll talk you through a few ideas for next steps. You may want to explore. If this is a technique you'd like to delve into further. So join me there when you're ready. 11. Next Steps: Alright, so we've got this gorgeous little collage, but where can we go from here? The first thing I would encourage you to do before you tidy your desk is to keep any little shapes and pieces of paper which are large enough to be useful. The reason for this is that sometimes, particularly if you want to use this process as a way to work through creative block, or you just want to develop a regular creative habit. Having a few shapes which already exist can just break down the resistance which can be present in that first step towards creating something. Finding a little shape which might inspire another and then another can really just give us that head start we sometimes need when we're stuck in a creative rut. Find a little envelope or folder to keep your off cuts in. This really can be such a valuable place to start making from, particularly when we're feeling not entirely inspired. Another thing I would encourage you to try if this is a process you enjoyed and you'd like to develop it further is to create more collages. They work really beautifully in little series. Try keeping your color palette the same across a series to keep that coherence and avoid getting overwhelmed. Revisit your sketches we did at the beginning of the class, maybe add to them and make a few more pieces. Pretty soon, it will start to become like second nature to make these little botanical artworks. And really, the possibilities for the different collages you can make are absolutely endless. Another direction you might enjoy taking this in is to develop a collage into a still life. Adding a vase to hold your flower, a few more blooms, and maybe a texture to suggest a surface and another to represent a background, and suddenly you have an awesome still life collage. If you go down this route, I'd suggest either scaling up your collage size so that the cutting out doesn't become too fiddly, or you may need to simplify your botanical elements to make them more manageable. Another suggestion for an awesome way to develop this class project would be to explore some different subject matter. Botanicals are awesome, but why not try some abstracts, portraits, animals, shoes, food, or anything else which inspires you. This process can be applied to literally any subject you'd like to make a collage from. So go, play, explore, and have fun. 12. Thank You: T hank you so much for joining me today. I hope you've had fun and made something gorgeous that you feel proud of. This is a great little technique to come back to when you're feeling stuck or overwhelmed creatively, when you want to come up with new ideas and different ways of interpreting shapes, colors, or textures, or just when you need a bit of creative playtime. I can't wait to see what you've created. Please remember to post a class project if you feel comforty sharing your work, and let's also support each other by liking and commenting on those other student projects in the gallery, too. If you'd like to share your work on social media, you can find me on Instagram with the handle at Mal Rye. So please tag me and use the hashtag modern folk collage so that I can see your gorgeous work. If you enjoyed the class, I would be really grateful if you would consider leaving a review. This is so helpful, both for me as a teacher, but also for other students who may be considering taking the class. If you'd like to find out a bit more about me, my work, and other courses I teach, then the best place to do that is on my, which is at MK. And if you'd like to stay in touch, then I'd love for you to join Mel Mail, my quarterly newsletter, which you can sign up for on my website. Thank you so much for joining me. I hope you had fun today, and I hope I'll get to see you again soon. Bye for now.