Mixed Media Collage Silhouette Portraits

1. Introduction: Okay. Are you looking for new ways to create mixed media artworks? Are you curious about how to incorporate portraits into your mixed media art practice? Hi, I'm Elizabeth and welcome to my class Mixed Media collage Silhouette portraits. I am a professionally trained artist and art educator, as well as a published author illustrator. In 2020, I began teaching for Skillshare, developing classes that explore a wide range of materials, techniques, and art making approaches as I share my creative journey and artistic practices with my students. I love exploring mixed media techniques and finding new ways to work those materials and techniques into my artwork, and I love coming up with new ways to work collage into my mixed media art practice, as well as finding new ways to break down some of the more intimidating art concepts, such as in this case, with portraits. Then we'll add lots of fun mixed media techniques and materials as we bring our new collage silhouette portraits to life. There's a wide range of materials that you can use. I have a few that I'm particularly fond of, but really you can work with whatever art supplies you happen to have on hand. This class is intended for creatives of all skill levels as a fun way to get into collage, mixed media art practice, as well as incorporate portraits of sorts into your artistic journey. By the end of this class, you'll have created some fun decorative watercolor papers. Learn how to incorporate them into a collage practice. You'll have learned how to use magazine portraits as a template for mixed media portrait artwork. And ways to add mixed media techniques to your portrait collages. I hope you'll join me in this really fun mixed media collage portrait class. Okay. 2. Class Project: Thanks for joining me. For our class project, we'll be creating some fun watercolor textured paper, choosing a magazine portrait for our collage template, cutting that out and then building up our collage image. Then we'll a lots of fun mixed media techniques and materials as we bring our new collage silhouette portraits to life. Our portraits will be silhouettes, but you can add as many details as you like. If you don't have access to magazines, no worries, popping over to the projects and resources section of class where I have several uploads of different portrait silhouettes that you might want to use for class. This class is designed for students of all experience levels as a fun way to create mixed media collage portraits. It's so fun to see how everyone approaches an art project, especially when it involves mixed media and collage and watercolor technique papers. I really hope you'll consider sharing your project in the student gallery on the class project section of class. The first step is to gather up our art supplies. So let's head over to the next lesson to see some of the materials that you might want to work with. See you soon. 3. Materials: Welcome back. Now, let's talk about a few art supplies that you're going to want to have on hand for class and some that you might want to consider having nearby. I've included a list of necessary and optional art materials over on the class description section of class. The materials for this class are pretty simple. We're going to use some watercolor or mixed media paper. You can decide how big or small you want to work. I like going rather large so that I have a lot of flexibility with space to both have my watercolor texture techniques as well as my options for collage and then adding in mixed media materials. So I would say your end piece should probably be around nine by 12 " at smallest. But you can go as large as you want to. This piece of paper for my final one is going to be 18 by 12 ". You're going to want to find some magazine portraits that are about a full page in size or pretty decent in size so that we have something really interesting to work with. The size of the portrait will actually probably dictate the end piece that you work on, depending on how much additional space and negative space in the background that you want to have. So I would say portraits that are about this size are what you're going to want for your portrait template. We're going to be cutting those out. So we need scissors. We're also going to be doing collage. I like to work with white liquid glue, and then I like to paint that on with an old paint brush. It's an old acrylic paint brush. I like having these little cups on hand, so I can fill them with the glue and then easily paint. Then I like having some scrap copy paper on the side too to keep the gluey mess on the scrap paper and not on my art table surface. For the mixed media part of the class, you can really work with anything that you want to. I'm going to be using some fine liner work. I'm going to be probably getting into some brush pens. I've got some acrylic paint markers, so I really love how bold they are, and then some colored pencils. Those are kind of my standard mixed media go to when I'm working back into a collage that starts with textured watercolor paper. And that's it. You can use as many other mixed media art materials as you want to. You could get out your oil pestels, your soft estels, charcal, any other markers that you have on hand. There's really no limit to how far you can take this, but you could also just do it with watercolor paper, ballpoint pen, and leave it at that. Take some time to gather up your art supplies and then head on over to the next lesson where I will meet you to begin working on our watercolor texture techniques. See you soon. 4. Watercolor Texture Techniques: Okay. Welcome back. Let's begin creating our watercolor texture papers. There's a wide range of ways to work with watercolor. But when it comes to creating textured papers, my go to is always wet and wet. I wet the surface of my paper and then I work with some really juicy color so that I can build up some really beautiful color on my paper before I start applying my texture techniques. Let's take a look at two watercolor texture techniques for class. So to kick off this art project, I wanted to go over two new watercolor techniques so that you have some experience creating some textured watercolor paper that you can then use in your portrait collage and mixed media projects. So both of these techniques are going to be wet and wet. So the first step is always wetting the paper, and then we're using wet media, which is why it's called wet on wet. So I've wet my paper that I've taped down to a sheet of plexi glass, and now I'm dropping in some color. And I really love to build up juicy vibrant color. So sometimes it takes a little bit of time depending on the type of water color that you're using. So this one, I decided to kind of go with an analogous color scheme. Because we're working non realistically for this project, you can use any color combinations that you want to. If you're new to creating decorative papers and working with a wet on wet technique for water color. Analogous is a good way to go. So an analogous color scheme are colors that are next to each other on the color wheel. The great thing about analogous colors is that you use the same colors to kind of make them up. So when they bleed together and mix together on the page, they're going to make another beautiful color versus if you're kind of jumping across the color wheel, you can sometimes end up with some muddled stuff. So for this technique, I wanted to just play around with watercolor blooms. So that is where a wetter amount of water or water color paint is dropped onto a wet surface, and then it pushes the pigment out and creates these really beautiful bloom edges. Wet the paper, paint in a bunch of color, and then you just splatter some water or water color over the top of it. And as it hits the page, it pushes the pigment out, and when it dries, it's really beautiful. So the next technique begins the exact same way. We're going to wet the page, and then we're going to drop in lots of nice juicy color. This one is a texture that's created using either gauze or cheese cloth or any kind of fabric material that's kind of like that. I didn't how many cheesecloth on hand, so I decided to use some medical gauze for this. So before I started dropping my color in, I cut out my strips of gauze. So I'm just kind of making them about the length. A width of my paper. So the next step is to drop in the color. The more color you have, the more of an effect you're going to see with something like a gauze or a cheesecloth texture technique. So I'm just using a bunch of different greens. And I was taking a long time to get the vibrancy that I really wanted with my pan water colors. So in the end, I did decide to grab some really bright yellow liquid water color. I'm using black liquid water color. It works great for these textured watercolor papers because the color is so bold and you can get a lot of it in a tube, which is a bottle, which is really nice. So you just kind of drop it down on the page, and then It's going to do its own wet on wet reaction. Blick liquid water color is a little gubbier, a little thicker consistency. So I do like to add a little bit of water to kind of help move it around, plus I really wanted the juicy effect all over. And because the texture technique was going to completely change the painted surface, it doesn't really matter what it looks like before you put the gauze on. So here's a point where I am stretching out my gauze so that I can really start to see the fibers in there for how it is woven together. Cheese cloth you won't have to do this with as much, but this gauze, I really needed to to cover to the surface and to really get the effect I wanted. And then I press it down because everywhere it touches the surface is where the texture technique is going to show up, and we really want that texture for this. So I'm stretching out another strip, and I'm going to lay that across the watercolor surface. And then I decided to cut another little section just to really cover the whole surf I step so that I had a lot of that beautiful gauzy textured fiber technique happening when I take it off. And this is a technique where we're going to have to let it dry. And then once it dries, we'll remove the gauze, and then you can see that it should look something like this dried image. Let's head it over to our next lesson. Will we wait for our watercolor texture papers to dry. See you there. Okay. 5. Silhouette Portrait Collage: Okay. Welcome back. Now, let's choose which magazine portrait we're going to be using as a template to create our portrait collage. And then let's get that transferred onto our watercolor paper and begin building up the portrait collage portion of our class project. So for our portraits, we're going to be using magazine images as templates for the silhouette shape. So I've got four different options that I've pulled out of various magazines. These would all be really great. The what you want to think about is the outside shape. So if I chose this one, I would have a straight on silhouette, which can be totally great. These ones, I've got a profile. This one is a nice three quarter shot. We're going to know it's a face because of this line here. The rest of the details on the inside might vanish when it becomes a collage. So that will be something we'll have to think about. And then here's another three quarter shot going the other way, which also this one, we can see the back of the head. We've got a little bit of the body. This might be a better three quarter shot than this one. You might want to save this face for a different project. Let's actually set that one aside and think about which of these three is going to give me the look that I want for my portrait silhouette. I think for this one, I'm going to go with the middle one just because there's a lot of body there. There's the hair to work with, and it's going to give me some really interesting negative space. But you want to go for something like this when you're looking for your portrait, something that's fairly full page for your magazine image. So the next step is to cut it out. So we're going to go ahead and cut along here. And Magazine paper is pretty thin. So we want to be careful, especially if we're cutting some smaller areas. It's okay if it's not perfect. We're going for the silhouette. If we end up with some of the background there as well, that's totally fine. It's going to carefully cut around the details of the mouth. We can always clean up any rough edges later on. Then our silhouette there's two different ways we can do it. It can be with the magazine image facing up when we trace it onto our decorative watercolor paper, or we can flip it upside down. And I'll show you. If we leave it up right, we're going to end up with a mirrored image. Then I'm going to go ahead and get my decorative paper. Now, I have to decide, I've got a couple options, and I want to have one is my background and I want to have one is my figure as my portrait. Here's the one that I made in class where I dropped the water down. This one I had made previously, these two. I had made for a different class. These are some extras and this is using salt technique. If you want to learn more about that, definitely check out some of my other watercolor decorative paper related classes. This one is with liquid watercolor and ink. This is pretty great and vibrant. Then this one doesn't have as much going on as I'd like. I'm going to set that one aside. This was an experiment. These both were experiments with ink and liquid water color and blotting, but they're a little more muted than I want to do. Then this is one where it's a watercolor and ink abstract that I did that has now made its way into my collage. Let's see. I'm going to save this one for a future poisonous dart frog. Then this green looks nice with that pink. This is a little crazy eliminate this one. Then, I do like this in that together. These look nice together because the greens create a unity there. The pink is a nice pop. I'm going to go with these two. I have to decide what's my background and what's my figure. One way you can do that is you can look at one full sheet for the background and then just put a little corner on it and see how you like this against that with this being taking a background to it. Then we can do the same thing. This way. Cover that up, squint a little bit too to see which one feels. It wants to be a background. It really doesn't matter which way it goes, and it's going to change a lot when we get into mixed media work. Let's do this. Let's keep this is our background, and I'm going to use this one for my figure. I'm going to set my background aside. So she is going to go down on here. What I love about doing this, I love doing this on the back side, and I don't really know what part I'm going to pick, but I do know that I want this white border to go away. I'm going to quickly cut that off so that I don't end up with the tape border as part of my collage portrait. She's going to fit on there this way. I'm just going to go ahead and flip it over. I really like that she's looking to the right. I'm actually going to trace it upside down. If I kept her looking to the right and traced it this way, my actual image would be looking to the left, like I said, that mirrored image, but I I want to keep her to the right, so I want to trace her looking to the left. I can put it all the way down on the bottom. I know that she's not there's no white edge there. The other thing you can do is if you're worried about this slipping, you can take a little bit of tape and we can create some tape balls. We're going to trace this. With pencil. But if you're worried about it slipping, you can just put a couple tape balls down just to keep it. Keep it from scooching on you while you're tracing it. That's attached, and I'm going to go ahead and take my pencil and I'm going to trace around the image. The reason I like to do it on the back side is because I don't want these pencil marks on the watercolor side. If you want to see what exactly is happening on the watercolor side, feel free to do this the other way. And then you don't have to worry about flipping your image over or anything because what you trace is what you're going to get. But I like to just be able to get some nice trace lines and not have to worry about them because they might disappear in the mixed media step, but they might not. And you can't erase pencil off of watercolor paper without damaging the paper in some way. Then you can take this off. We are done with the magazine. Unless you really love this and you want to keep it for a different collage or more silhouette work or just in case something happens and you want to start over. Set that to the side and then I'm going to cut out my shape. We don't have to be terribly careful, but the closer you cut to your outline, the more like your template, your portrait template, it's going to be. Then this is the super fun part. Save your extra because this is a lot of really great decorative paper. We're going to set that up for the side. This is my favorite. This is the Bak veal. Awesome. So if you planned it out, you already know what part of your paper you're using, but I didn't. I just randomly placed it on the back and traced it. So I let the watercolor technique gods help determine. I still have a little salt on here because I'm going to be doing mixed media back into it, I do want to get those granules off a little bit. I want to be able to draw and paint back into this. Now I've got my portrait, and then I'm going to go ahead and get my decorative background paper out again. She's going to go off to the side. Unlike the other one that I created where I had a vertical format, this one is probably going to be horizontal. Well, it doesn't have to be. It absolutely doesn't have to be because actually that might be pretty cool. Then I might still cut this down a little bit because that's a lot of height there. And I want to because I have a corner from my picture, that kind of determines that this is going to go down here. So actually, I'm going to go ahead and trim off the border on this one, too. It's not just I only tape it enough to get it to stay on the board during the painting process. If you tape farther in, you probably have a really lovely white border, which can look really sharp. But I'm always in such a rush to get to the painting part of it that I don't take terrible care with my taping process other than getting it as secure as I needed to be to get the paper really with color and water. So Optional step off the border. The scraps out of the way. Now I need to decide where is she going to go? She going to go that way? I can always cut it down. I like it vertical, I think. I like having that extra area on the top to play with B she's whimsically looking off to the side. The question is, do I want it this way? Or do I want it this way? I like this corner better. I don't know, no rhyme or reason to it. I'm going to go ahead and get out my liquid glue and an old paper brush and I'm going to go ahead and glue her down. But actually, now that I'm thinking about this, we can do more to this background. We're going to ink into it and paint into it and all that good stuff. But we could actually collage more into this, maybe that's what we'll do. Maybe that's where this paper comes in, we cut this up in some way. I'm going to glue ahead and glue it down. I've got a little cup that I'm going to go ahead and put my liquid glue into. These are really great. I love picking these up at our food supply store where you can get stuff in bulk for catering or parties or whatever. These are just little sauce cups. They come with the lids, which might actually let your glue last for a little while if you needed it to potentially. I haven't actually tested it. Now, the one other trick that I have is I love a scrap piece of paper because then I can put whatever piece I'm gluing down on there and that I don't have to worry about glue all over my art table. I'm using the white liquid glue because I am working with mixed media watercolor paper, so it's a little thicker. A glue stick might work if you have really thin paper, but oftentimes I find that I need the thicker liquid glue to really get it to adhere well. It's going to get all around the edges and sum in the middle. I work a little bit quick for this step, and then pick your portrait up, place it where you want it. Then once you've got it there, gently squash it down. The liquid glue does add a little bit of moisture to the paper. Right now, my paper feels a little bit damp, but that's okay. The other nice thing about the brushes, it helps me keep from getting too much glue because I can control how spread out it gets with the paint brush. Now I've got my collage portrait on my background. I'm going to keep gluing, but I have to make some decisions about what's going to happen with some more collage. I'm going to wash my brush really fast. At this stage, I have a lot of choice to make. I can go right from this into other mixed media materials or I can collage more into this. That may be fun to play around with. When I was putting her down on here, I had a feeling of this idea of adding a frame. But to do that, I would need a paper that was a little bit bigger. I like that idea. I'm going to go ahead and trim off the border on this one. Then I'm going to actually cut this into a frame that goes around here, and then that actually solves my dilemma when I was trying to pick which paper to use because I do still really love this paper with these other two. Colors together, like the textures. And mixed media artwork. You really there's so many things that happen along the way that change how an artwork looks. A lot of it is just trusting your intuition, trusting your gut, listening to whatever ideas come to mind and fearlessly trying them out. No idea is a bad idea. No, I'm going to get a ruler. I'll measure it just for the sake of being a bit ter. Let's see. I'll just do an inch. I'll keep it very Very thin, but it'll just kind of give a little picture frame feeling to it. This is something I haven't tried before. This is an idea that just completely came on spontaneously in this moment of creating this piece and explaining my process to you. Intuitive thought process in action. I'm going to measure in an inch all the way around. Then I'm going to connect those lines and cut out the middle. Then the middle will give me more decorative paper to use in the future. But I also have this really cool frame idea. I think it's going to be really cool. I'm excited about it. That's the most important thing. C. Then I'm going to use my exacto knife to cut these out so that I can get a nice clean cut on the corners, just like I would do if I was matting a piece of art and cutting the mat hole myself. I'd want to be in control so that I could stop right at that corner and have a nice clean corner cut. Okay. So if you have done any matting of your artwork, same idea. I should say if you've done any matting of your artwork and you don't have a mat cutter. Same idea. My giant cutting mat is wrinkly, like wobbly. It's really old. I need a new one. But the back of an old sketchbook works great. Ruler. Exact knife. I'm going to do is I'm going to line up my ruler with my pencil line and I'm going to I'm only going to cut from one corner. Make sure my blade is tight. From one corner of my pencil lines to the other. I'm going to go through that line twice. Great. Because I'm working with thick paper. Actually, I'm going to do both of the shorts first so I don't have paper sliding around on me too much. Line at my ruler. This act knife cut through once. I found over the years when I'm using these act knives I used to be really impatient. I kind of expected one cut to do it. I have since learned that more cuts gets me a cleaner, more accurate line, cutout section. So I'm still applying a nice amount of pressure, but I'm I'm letting it do multiple cuts so that I don't have to like working smarter, not harder, right? Okay, almost one more cut, and then we'll make sure we loosen up those corners. I can already tell they didn't quite cut all the way, and I want to be careful that I don't rip them. Okay. So now, just go ahead and carefully free that corner. And that one. Here we go. And this one still attached a little bit and gently moving it around. Okay. I still have all of this beautiful paper to use for something else, best of all, I have a really cool textured watercolor frame. I'm going to go ahead and, I love this. I'm so glad this idea came to me. Now, there is a little bit of buckling there that's from the back paper because of the glue drying and the moisture here and the dryness here. That's going to be fine. I'm not going to worry about that right now. I do want to decide which way I want my frame to go. That way. That's the ticket. No, actually that way because I like what's happening up there more. Then I like the bottom. This is about the same size. I could cut my smaller picture down if I wanted to, or I can. Actually, I'm going to do that. I'm going to go ahead and pop over. I only want to take off a tiny, tiny little bit. I'm just going to take off a little bit over there at my paper cutter. This is all I took off just this little strip for now. I want to make sure I want to make sure that I have enough room to tape it to the frame. I don't want it to come loose. I could glue it. Actually, I probably should just glue it. Then everything will be attached more. Let's do that. I'm going to set this off to the side, and I'm going to get a big scrap of paper. I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to put glue all along my frame and then I'm going to place my figure on top of it. Scrap paper. Now, I don't need to go all the way to the end because I know that I have a little bit of space. There. So I'm just going to paint a thick line of glue all the way around the inner part of the frame. And then after this step, I am going to I'm going to put it upside down and set some heavy books on top of it and just let it hang out for about 10 minutes just to let that glue settle in and dry a little bit before I move on to the next step. But after this step, I might be done with collaging. Because I put such a detailed frame on it, that might change how I feel about collaging further into either the silhouette or the background. I go to work fast. I know this is the top. I'm going to make sure I put her on the way I want her. Scooch it a little bit. I want it to be right in the middle. I know that I didn't cut anything off the sides. That looks good. I'm going to burnish. Sorry for the shaky camera. I really want that to stick nicely. Now, the whole thing is starting to warp. Totally okay. Well, let's do the big reveal. Oh, yes. Yes, I love this. Indecision about decorative papers can really work in your favor. I'm going to be super curious if you also try to do a decorative frame on yours because I think this is super cool. And this is just the collage step. Because there's so much going on between all of the decorative papers that I'm using. This is going to be up for my collage portion. If you want to collage further into your background, if you want to create more of a collage textured background. Collage pattern, break it up some more with collage, break your figure up. However you want to do that, collage as much as you want to. Then when you're done with the collaging portion, I recommend flipping it over. I'm going to go ahead and put this scrap paper on top of it. Now I'm going to let my portrait collage dry for at least 10 minutes just to ensure that the paper dries out a bit and the glue is set before I begin applying mixed media techniques. I'll see it soon in the next lesson. Okay. 6. Mixed Media Techniques Part 1: Okay. Now it's time to begin using different mixed media techniques to enhance our portrait collages. As I said earlier, you can use whatever art supplies you have on hand for this portion of class. My go tos when it comes to mixed media collage tends to be ink brush pens, colored pencils. Those are my top three. But sometimes I also like to paint back into my collages, feel free to experiment and play with whatever art supplies you have on hand or follow along with the techniques that I'm going to be doing. Let's get started. We're ready for the next phase of our project, where we're going to start to work back into our collage silhouette portrait using mixed media materials. I have a sharpia fine liner. I've got some marker, brush pens, I've got my colored pencils. I'm going to get out and anything else that comes to mind. I already have a little bit of ink work happening in the frame that I decided to add from a previous collage paper abstract piece. I definitely want to incorporate ink into other parts of this. I think because the silhouette on mine can lean toward abstract, even though there's an outline of her face there, I might want to do some work to make the background darker, especially around her so that the facial features in this profile view are more apparent. That's something I'm thinking about doing. I do have a system for how I go in with my mixed media. As far as the sharpie and the fine liner and the colored pencils go, those I can go back and forth between, and it's not a big deal. But the brush pen, I do like to do that before I do my colored pencils. I'm not sure. I'm not actually sure which direction I want to go with this. But I think what I'm going to do first is I'm going to start adding some inking details to my background. To try to give it a little bit more definition and to push it back behind her because right now this lightness is competing with the brightness in some parts of my silhouette. There's a little bit of a fight happening for what's foreground and what's background. That isn't necessarily a bad thing because we're working a little abstractly, a little loose representationally, but I do want my background to be my background. I'm going to try to push it back a bit. One way I can do that is by adding ink. I'm going to go ahead and start inking the background anywhere that feels right, and then I'm probably going to jump two colored pencils. We'll see. I'm going to start with my fine liner. This fine this is a CPA pen. It's not waterproof. I do have to be a little bit careful because my brush pens, they will reactivate this ink. I might not be able to do brush pen in my background. If you're concerned about it, definitely go with a waterproof ink so that you have the freedom to go back and forth. But I am out of waterproof ink pens right now, and I do really love the line of the SIPA pen. That's what we're going to use today. It's going to be great. One of the ways that I like to ink is just starting to go along the edges that are created by the textures of the water color. Essentially outlining is kind of a good first step. If you're new to inking or you're just not sure where to begin. There's really no way to worry. It's not a stressful process. It's actually relaxing, especially if you allow yourself to be a little bit more loose with it and you don't worry about perfectly lining up with all of the marks and edges that were created with your textured watercolor. You can also add things that aren't there. Not worry so much about the harsh definition and just have some fun with it. Which is what I'm doing in a lot of these sections. The blooms have given me some really lovely sections to go along, but I don't want to spend all day inking this. I just want to add some fun ink details to create some definition to the background. I'm going to let myself be a little more relaxed in how it goes. If you're interested in other inking techniques that we might not get to in this one that I might not explore depending on where this piece goes. Definitely check out my intuitive art making, I think it's called simple watercolor and ink abstract techniques. You can find it in my skiture profile. If you want to check out some other watercolor techniques, some other inking techniques. Watercolor and ink is one of my favorite mix of mediums when it comes to mixed media. It's one that I do a lot of. I love sharing ways that I do that to help inspire others to add that to their art practice. All right. That's a good start. That's getting interesting. The important part about mixed media really art in general. But mixed media, especially is to just be fearless. There's really nothing you can do or add that is going to ruin something. Everything is going to just further enhance it. I'm going to go in with some colored pencil and I'm going to try to keep pushing that background back, but also add some interest. I'm just going to do a couple pops of darker color that match what happened with the water color and try to add sar interest. And then I'm probably going to jump back to the ink again. We'll see where it goes from here. The color pencil is something you can go in fold and just create blocks of color. You can also just add a little a couple of value scales where you've got some darkness that fades out, and that's what I'm going to try to do. I'm going to really try to get my colored pencil to fade out into what's already happening with the water color. And just continue to break up the background into some interesting sections. The color pencil is going to show the tooth of your paper. Depending on how toothy, your paper is, you might have more or less texture that shows up with the colored pencil. That's not a problem at all. I just know that because I want to fade mine out, I just have to spend a little bit more time on the fade out part so that I can get it to disappear into where the water color is. This is also a great way to practice your pencil control if you are newer to shading because really it's just all shading is all about pencil control. And getting it so that you can create the values that you want to where you want them. Pretty cool. I'm very happy with it. And then as you're going, you're going to notice areas that you might need to go back to help create a balance in your work. Don't be afraid to jump around and revisit some sections as you decide and to really embrace some of the techniques that you're using. Add some great colored pencil additions. So this is part of the process, right? You make a decision, you do it, and then you have to evaluate where to go next. There's still some competition happening between the figure and the background. That's okay. I have to figure out where I want to go next. I think I'm going to jump to the figure and kind of incur a bit and maybe add some brush pen in two. Actually, maybe I'll do the brush pen first and then see where I want to go next. We're kind of phase one of mixed media techniques, and then we're going to tackle another stage of mixed media in the next lesson. 7. Mixed Media Techniques Part 2: Okay. Now we're going to work on doing some mixed media techniques to the portrait part of our collage, and then I'm going to see if I need to go back into the background at all or the frame that I put on it to see what else it needs. Now, I decided I want to be a little bit bolder, and I'm just going to start going in with some brush pens. These are dual tip brush pens. So color is the brand. I really like them. They work great, and I rarely use the fine tip. I almost always use the brush tip portion of them. But you could do the same effect that I'm going to play around with with going back in with your watercolor or even guash acrylic, but I want to really make her pop against the background. I'm just going to go in and use my watercolor texture as a guide to decide how to make some stuff pop. If I work fast enough with my brush pens, I can get them to blend out. At this point, it could get really abstract or it could get you could lean more towards representational, depending on how much texture you have in your portrait watercolor paper. We're going to see, I'm going to let this go abstract and just really embrace what's happening here with all of this salt texture that I have from this paper. I'm just trusting my intuition. I'm just playing around taking pauses to reassess where it's going. This is the point where it might have some awkward moments because I'm making some pretty bold decisions, and that's okay because I know that in the end it's going to be really neat. I'm just embracing whatever's happening here. You should too. But if you're new to intuitive art making, this might be a point where you need to just be bold, be brave. You can't do anything wrong. That looks good. I want to go in with some darker green, I think. I don't want to lose the light areas from my texture. If anything, I want to make those pop even more. Another important point is to keep taking moments to pause and take the whole picture in. It's really easy to get sucked into a small section and forget to check back on yourself and see where things are at. I'm going to go back and forth between these two greens. I don't really like this harsh line that's happened here and I'm going to try to reactivate the marker a little bit so that I can soften that. I can also soften it with colored pencil, too. You might find it picking up some of your water color since the markers are a wet media, and that's okay. I go with some yellow. Pop that a little bolder. And some sections to try to be a little sketchier loosen up. I think that'll help me eliminate some of the harsher lines that can happen when you use marker brush pen. The other thing I like to do is to these really light markers and use that almost like a blender. You would a color a splendor and colored pencil or a blending stump with other drawing media. It picks up a little bit of the color that's there. It lays on its own color. Depending on what color you put it with, it can help soften it. In this case, it's intensifying it. So it's doing the opposite of what I was hoping it would do. But like I said, I can go back in with colored pencil and play with that to help soften things up bit. I think I'm going to go in with some fine liner and just start to ink some stuff. Things feel a little muddled at the moment. I'm just going to super loosely go in and follow some of my lines around. I'm already ing it better. I don't know. There's something about that black line, although it's a very bold statement in a piece, it also I don't know, it just helps in so many ways. I went up into my other section. That's okay. I'm going to embrace that. Her break the outline of the silhouette. Let's see. What else do we want to do. Let's go with some colored pencil. If you find that your color pencil isn't really going down like you expected to, it's probably because if you use something like a brush pen or a marker, your paper is now a little wet. You can wait or you can just embrace the way it's going down on the page. I'm doing a combination of the two. I think I need to be a little bolder with what's happening here. She's gotten pretty abstract. We can't really tell she's there. Maybe I need to pull back on that a little bit. This is a white paint pen. It's showing a little bit of what's happening underneath through. I find a lot of joy in my mixed media practice when I really embrace layering and texture mark making texture. Interesting. One direction marker is making folder marks than the other way. But I think I also did less brush pen on this side. She's getting there. I'm going to flip this over because I really want some of these to be bolder. She's definitely getting abstract. I think what I want to do is I'm going to circle back to the background and I want to do a little bit more bold work in the back just to help create some more separation. Because if I squint, there's still a little bit of competition happening. I really like this angled line thing that's happening. I think I'm going to do it across these sections and close them up, almost like stitching. If you go faster, you actually end up with a straight line. I don't like that at all. We're going to get rid of that. We're going to go in with some pinks and I'm just going to d that down a bit. That's one of the great things because we're working with mixed media and we're working with layers. We truly can layer out things that we don't love as much. I have to keep going with these lines in a way or at least get them to stop in a way that makes sense, which I might be able to do. But I'm going to have to do them somewhere else to unify it. What I can do is I can I can shrink the space. I'm using the techniques that I did earlier to help me eliminate how much of that I'm going to have to deal with it's right in the middle of the picture. But I can also go back into it with paint pen. But I have to remember that the paint pen is going to activate my fine liner because I'm not using a waterproof fine liner. I actually I'm liking it, but now I have to treat more areas with that darkness because otherwise it'll look strange. It's okay. I'm going to just repeat the things I didn't like and then follow the steps that I used to fix them. I'm just following the same steps that I did. Up there again. The cool. The cool thing about mixed media is you really don't know where an artwork is going to end up because every time you add a mark, you add an art material, you make a decision, it changes things. You just along for the fun creative ride, which is amazing. I know. In the end, I'm going to love this. I just need to stick with it through some of these awkward stages. I do need to do some more of that dark black though because otherwise, that'll stick out. Unity yet spontaneity is what I'm going for. I'm going to paint back into them. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to get up my watercolors. I'm going to paint back into some of these other areas. Let's start with some red and a little bit of pink. I'm going to start up here. Now again, my watercolor is going to activate my fineliner and that's okay. I'm just going to be a little careful when I get up to those edges. You can also do a glazing approach to your water color at this point and let it go over areas. Actually, we can pull that color across. Even pick up some of that color. Yeah. Let's doing the job. This is working out great. Let's do a little bit more pink. Because I know I'm going to end up painting over all of it now that I've embraced glazing. I can paint a bit more sloppily and it'll be fine. It actually makes for some pretty cool effects. My paper is warping. But when it dries, we can put a heavy book on it again upside down and we can flatten it back out. Don't worry about that. As I get it more and more wet, it is going to warp a little bit. That is working great actually. That's now all gotten a lot bolder and a lot darker and now the brightness of the greens on my figure are popping off that really nicely. It is going to mellow out a bit as it dries. You can always decide to go back into it. But I'm really happy with that. I'm going to go ahead and let this dry And I think it's done. And then after it's dry, I'll put a piece of paper over it, and I'll put a couple of heavy books just to kind of help flatten things back out again since we have the combination of now re wedded watercolor paper with collage. I love this, and I can't wait to see how your mixed media collage site portrait turned out. Let's turn it over to the final lesson of class to wrap things up. See you soon. 8. Final Thoughts: Okay. Thank you so much for exploring mixed media and portrait collages with me. I had so much fun working on this class and creating this class project, and I hope you did, too. I would love to see how your projects turned out and hear how things went for you in class. There are two ways that you can share with everyone else who is in the class and those considering taking the class. The first is to upload your projects to the class resources section of class in the student gallery. This is a really fun way to share images of your artwork both in process and the final project, depending on how you like to document your creative process, as well as adding some notes about what techniques you use, the watercolor texture papers that you created. Anything goes when it comes to sharing in the class project section. The second way that you can share with others, your experience is taking the class is by leaving a review. This is a really great way to help others who are considering taking the class, find out what it was like from the student perspective. I'm not only a skill share teacher, I'm also an avid skill share student, and I really appreciate the opportunity to leave a review on the classes that I've taken. And I appreciate checking out the reviews that past students have left as well. It's a great way to share your experience with the class to give the instructor feedback on how things went, what you loved, that they might want to consider doing in future classes, and even suggestions for things that could be added or anything, really. It's really a wonderful way just to kind of summarize your thoughts as you wrap up the learning experience of that class, as well as provide others with some insights as they consider their next steps in their creative journey. So if you do have time to leave a review, thank you in advance so much. I greatly appreciate it, and I can't wait to hear what you thought about the class. Do have questions during the class, a great way to get in touch is through the discussion section. It is a wonderful way to post questions both to me during your time in class, to fellow students who might be taking the class. It's really a wonderful way to start building classroom community. I will be happy to reply to any questions, comments, feedback that you share in the discussion section of class. I love sharing my art adventures over on my Instagram channel, and that includes celebrating student work. So if you do share your class project, I'll be sure to ask you if it's okay if I can reshare it over on my Instagram to help others find the class to see the amazing work that you've created. And I also love following other creatives. So if you would like to stay connected on Instagram, be sure to leave your Instagram profile name. In your class project, and I will happily jump over on Instagram and follow your creative journey there. If you want to stay up to date on my newest classes, be sure to click the follow button so we can stay connected on Skillshare. And if you want to continue your creative journey with me elsewhere, you can also find me over on YouTube under Elizabeth Welfare, where I share art tutorials, demonstrations, what I'm working on from the student and professional artists perspective, art adventures I go on, really all things Elizabeth and all things art over on my YouTube channel. So, feel free to jump on over there and follow and connect that way as well. And if you do pop on over to my YouTube channel, be sure to click Subscribe so we can stay connected and leave a comment. I would love to continue engaging as fellow creatives on this wild and wacky art journey that we have going on in our lives. I love hearing from and connecting with my students on and off Skill Share. And I'll see you next time.