Mini Class: Cheerful Collage Characters

1. Introduction: Hello. My name is Lucie Duclos and I'm a graphic designer, mixed media artist, and top teacher here on Skillshare. I started making these little collage characters in my sketchbook a while ago as just a little warm up exercise, something that I would do to loosen up. And they're so eclectic and playful. It's just like they're from another planet or another world. They are so much fun to make that I decided to create a mini class for you so you can make your own, too. It's a quick little ten minute project like doling on paper, all you need is paper scraps, anything you have on hand, markers, colored pencils, glue stick, a small sketchbook or index card, and you're ready to go. So I recommend making one every day if you can. They will certainly cheer you up. 2. Materials: The material for this project is pretty basic. I like to use this little sketchbook. It's a six in size. If you're in inches, it B 3.5 by almost five and three quarters, something like that. I just like it because it's it's cheap paper and I can keep adding to it and I like it in a little booklet like that. I can go ahead and start putting little piece of paper without even finishing it. But you can also use index cards. That works really well. It's a good format if you want to have separate pieces of cardboard. I found these when I was in France last year, and those are really good size too, if you live in France, you can get a cap the visit and these are great format for them too. A good weight. Whatever you want, you can also use a sketchbook if you prefer a small size sketchbook like that, even if there's dots, anything you want, really. As far as other material, very simple. Scissors, Glue Stick. I use the usual, that's a fine liner, a white paint pen. Then you can use either of those three because I like to do little red cheeks. You can use either colored pencils or crayon or a marker. Entirely up to you. Then I just get some paper scraps. Anything you have on your desk, don't overthink that part. It's really fun to just see what you can come up with with all these really weird pieces. Let's get started. 3. Collage your character: I'm going to start with this piece of card stock. It's the size of index card, and it's four by six. My process is very, very intuitive. I really look for pieces that are interesting. I usually start with the head of my character. This could work. A lot of stuff could be maybe we do that. This could work. I like to use negative shapes. This could work too. This could be the head. Sometimes I work with a few at the same time. I think I'm going to use this one because what I can do is I can just cut it and make it square like All right. Yeah. That's cool. There's my head right there. I'm going to just glue it down. I don't plan everything before and then glue it after. If that's what you're asking, a lot of people ask me that. I just put it down and I'll work from there. Now I'm going to be working on the body. So I just really I just grab some pieces and put them down. I don't have I think the silier the better, honestly. And I look for colors that I like to work with. So this looks kind of cool. Different shapes. A lot of time I don't cut anything with scissors. I just spare it or I use the sizes that are already there. Like I got this piece here. I'm just going to use it, right? So it's just like a little mosaic of paper that are already there. They already have their shape, and I kind of let it I really kind of let it happen. You know, I'm like, What do you want? What do you want to add? What do you want on your outfit? Oh, this is cool. Okay, I'm going to add that. Oh, there's my cat. My cat. Okay. And maybe I'll add one more thing. Oh, I like this little stripe here. It's kind of sassy. Yeah, let's add that there. And that's almost enough really for this one. We do have a visitor here. Yes. His name is White, the cat. Now I'm just going to add my detail, my face. My head it's pretty large. But those little characters, they come from another planet anyway, so they don't have to be Maybe I need to use white. Sometimes it's better to use white as a little more contrast. There you go. Then maybe I'll just go back here for the hair. Normally, I put little red cheeks right over there. But now I can't really because it's red on red, we'll do another one and I can show you how I do that. What I'm going to do though, I'm going to do little Little pig pony sep not pony tails, piggy I don't know. Piggy tails. All right. And then I'm going to add the body. Little collar. Little dress a little boxy dress, my feet. You don't need to know how to draw legs or feet. It's just little sticks with something at the end. All right. You don't have to have five fingers either. I do usually four. That's plenty. That's all you need. Then you can add some details with your marker or with your, um, colored pencil. I think I'm going to add some red shoes. This is where you can accessorize my below bow. I think I want a little hat. You get to a point where you want to add something and I just think she needs something like a little hat. A lot of time I won't even cut it. I'm just going to do it like that. Because I wouldn't even think of doing shape like that. But now that it's already there, I want to use it and that's how it gets really creative. There you go. Let's do that. I like her. The last step is to give your character a name if you can come up with a good name. I don't know what her name is. I might add some detail at this point. I think a little row of dot maybe. And I think we're done. You have a little character, and it took like 5 minutes. Let's do another one. 4. More silly characters: S 5. Aurevoir: So here's a little flip through my sketchbook to give you some inspiration. I don't spend a lot of time on these, and some are messier than others, but I don't worry too much about that because really, for me, they kind of just like rough sketches. So obviously, I would love to meet your little collage characters. So please share with me in the project section below. And then we can add to our little collection and cheer each other up. Don't they look good as a little group? Look at that. They're so fun. So anyway, I hope that you're gonna have fun with this and don't forget to follow me on Skillshare and Abto.