Landscape Collage from an Inspiration Photo

1. Join Me! Lake Landscape Mixed Media: Hello everyone. My name is Jamie Calvin strand. I'm an artist and I'm a designer. And I love collage. And today I'm going to walk you through step-by-step how to create a landscape collage from an inspiration photo. I think you'll enjoy this process and I hope you'll join me. 2. Intro & Supplies : Hello everyone, This is Jamie Calvin strand. Today we're going to do a mixed media piece and we're going to work from a copyright-free image. This one I found on unsplash.com. And there are many, many beautiful images to work from. If you haven't been to that site, I would suggest you have a look around. So here we go. And this is a list of supplies I used in this particular piece. You don't need everything here. You can use what you have. This is just kind of a jumping off point. So don't go out and spend a lot of money to see is what you have. So gather your things and let's get started. 3. Audtions: Welcome to the audition. What I'm doing here is going to my paper stash. Most of these papers I created myself, I am looking for colors that match the colors in the image. Now you probably aren't going to get exact, but just keep trying and see what you can find. You'll see the wide range of options here. And I kinda bring them all in and then narrow them down. This one's on an old magazine cover or magazine page. Some are watercolor, some are scraps auto magazines. This wide I think could be fun, but it's a little wild thing be look at that color match. These are a little more yellow, but I think they have some possibility. And this was a scrap cut from a mano print on black paper. And how perfect is that? 4. Cutting & Placement: Step 2, you're going to see me start to place some of the papers. I was really looking for a piece that had that dark and light blue at the same time. And this one's a little darker than the inspiration image, but I think it really works. Now this little piece I really loved because it has the water ripples in it. Again, even though the inspiration piece doesn't have water ripples, but I really think it works well. So I'm looking for a piece that has that kind of modeled green color. Some of these papers I made years ago for other purposes and they've been sitting in a box. I have these plastic bins that fit in my chores about an Ikea piece of furniture that I have. And so I have one box is all greens, One's all blues, him, et cetera. So I just pull those out and sort through them. When I'm doing a project like this. And it's just amazing. I'm so happy I didn't throw away these pieces even though they're scraps and some of them are quite ugly. They they really work for, for some of this kind of work. This is just for me to crop away some of the access to see what oil, what do I have here? Does this work? The pieces are much narrower than the original, as you can see. And I at first I thought I would make it the same size as the inspiration piece, but then I realize the pieces I liked were not wide enough. So I've changed the orientation. And this piece I was going to save because I thought, Oh, this, this makes a nice landscape on its own. I could just take some pending to it and then, and then I thought, maybe I will use it here because it really kinda works. So if you notice the and the inspiration picture there is black or very dark gray at the top and the bottom of the green. So that's why I cut the stripped away I did. Now let's see what I have starting to come together. 5. Stick it Down: And now I'm using a glue stick and I am placing everything in order. Hi, hi. 6. Trimming: So now I'm going to trim it to approximately five by seven. I could do the next steps without trimming it. But sometimes I just have a better perspective of what what's what if I trim it somewhere in the middle of the process like this? It's upside down, but at least it gives me an idea of what, what it will look like. Or I should say, it will give me an idea of how it will fit. 7. Charcoal & White Chalk: So I've just grabbed a little piece of vine charcoal. And I'm going to start integrating that black stripe with the piece next to it. Great thing about vine charcoal is if you don't like it, you can wipe it off. So it's a pretty great medium to use because you can try all kinds of things. Now in the past videos, I've done clear just all before. I've used the chalks and charcoals. In this case, I don't have to because I didn't I just I didn't use any matte medium or anything. It's just glue stick. And so the surface of the paper is still rough from the from the original paint that I put on it. So it does catch the catch the charcoal. Just using my finger with some charcoal on it to bring down the intensity of the white of the torn edge. I like the wider the torn edge, but maybe not quite as bright as it was. And I'm switching over to some white chalk to put the water lilies in. They're looking a little more like ripples on the water then lily pads. I actually come back a little bit later in this drawing with a with a white pencil and do a little bit better job of making them look like lily pads. So, but this is all, all part of the experiment, right? Try new mediums, see what works. Experiment. At this point, I use some fixative spray on it outside. And next time adding some white gel pen and graphite pencil. 8. Gel Pens & Graphite Pencil: This is the white gel pen. And I'm just putting in some tree chunks. And by going over that black stripe along with the painted stripe, charcoal, it blends the two again, that crease between the papers becomes lessened because i'm, I'm joining them with these new marks. I'm also kind of can't really see it, but I'm kinda holding the pen a little bit sideways, a little more than I normally do, which causes it to kinda skip. It doesn't make a real solid white line, which I like for this purpose. Now for the reflection. Because of the way I tore the paper, it almost looks in some ways like mountains in the background. And that's okay. Just depends on the viewer. What they'll see. If they'll see mountains in the background with winter, fall trees in the front. This is just a black pen pencil. And I'm just putting in that bit of a line. All these little details really make a difference in the end. And these are the lily pads going back in, I think this time they look a little bit more like lily pads. This is a black gel pen. Back to my graphite pencil. And now I'm going in and kind of scratching around on top of the white from the white gel pencil with graphite just to tone it back just a little bit. It's a little strong. Now I decide to bring out the big guns and do for the same purpose, to tone it down just a little bit, and that's back to the vine charcoal. I could do even more than I did. I, at this point, I kind of tend to not refer so much to the inspiration piece. I kinda just work with what I have. And I don't know if that's good or bad, but that's what's happening. At one loop, loose and their little more glue. 9. Finishing Up: And here we have the finished piece next to the inspiration piece. And here I've placed the or, the original art on top of the inspiration piece. So you can really see how it relates to I would love it if you would find an inspiration piece and share it with us, and then share your finished project. We'd love to see it. Thank you for being here. And I hope you enjoyed this process. 10. BONUS: So here are the drawers I was talking about earlier with the plastic benzene that contain the the fabric or fabric or the paper scraps. And if you find that you don't have a stash of paper, go ahead and start collecting. You can tear out magazine pages. You can paint on any kind of paper. Newspaper actually works amazingly well for collage after it's painted. And well, tissue paper. I mean, anything. Give it a go. Oh, and don't forget junk mail. Junk mail makes great collage material. Thanks for being here. I appreciate you so much.