Torn Paper Landscape Collages for Relaxation and Self-Care

1. Introduction: Making art has a way of grounding people in the present moment. When you focus your attention on shapes, lines, and colors, all the overwhelming feelings recede into the background. Art gives you the power to free yourself from stress and worries, and you can consciously decide to use this tool to your advantage. Hi, my name is Ewa Rosa and I'm an illustrator, embroidery artist, and Top Teacher here on Skillshare. Making art is my favorite form of self-care, and I believe that easy, simple projects are the best way to go when you want to reduce stress and anxiety. That's why today I want to show you how to create a torn paper landscape collage that will help you to relax and calm down in stressful times. Torn paper art is usually considered an activity for kids, but you can employ this technique to create some beautiful, much more 'grown-up' artworks. If you'll give it a chance, you will soon realize that the process of creating such artwork is not only playful but also therapeutic. First, we will browse some magazines and choose interesting pages to tear out. Basically, this means you have an excuse to curl on your sofa and relax with the drink of your choice and some favorite music. Remember, you're not being lazy. You are gathering materials for a very important project. If you don't have any magazines at hand, you can use ready-made colored paper for this project, or you can even create your own colored paper with watercolors. Next we will tear the chosen pages into smaller pieces to separate different colors from each other. This deliciously destructive act will allow you to release anger, stress, or any negative thoughts you might be having about your boss or your taxes. The last step is to play with paper scraps, arrange them into a landscape, and glue them to the surface to make a beautiful collage. This thoroughly creative and meditative act will help you refocus and get into the flow state. This class is for you if you struggle with the burdens of everyday life and you are looking for a quick remedy. Torn paper art will help you relax, plus you will get to create something unique and really pretty. The best thing is you don't need any special skills or materials to participate. If kids can do it, you can too! So let's get started! 2. Class Project: In this class, I will guide you step-by-step through the process of designing torn paper landscape in three different techniques, and I would love for you to create a collage using one of them. You're free to choose the topic of your artwork, whether it's forest scenery, a wavy ocean or a jungle. You can create a landscape from your imagination or use a photo for reference. As always, I encourage you to test out the techniques I'm sharing in a smaller format to see if you enjoy the process before you commit to creating a bigger piece. This is also a great way to test out the colors and compositions for the final artwork. When you're ready, take a photo of your artwork, then go to the Projects and Resources tab, click the Create Project button and upload it to the Gallery. I always love to see your beautiful creations, so please don't hesitate to share them. Class project gallery is a safe space where you can talk about your experiences and ask for help and feedback. I promise you, no one will judge you here and you will have a chance to spread the joy of creating and inspire others to make art as well. 3. Materials and Inspiration: To create this project, you will need a piece of thick paper or cardboard that will serve as a base for your collage. I will be using watercolor paper because it's fairly thick and that's what I have at hand. You will also need a glue stick and scissors for trimming down the edges of your artwork. And of course, you will need a selection of colored papers. In this class, I'm focusing primarily on photos from the magazines because this is something you probably have at hand, and you can find many interesting colors and textures there. But you can also use plain colored paper, and the third option is to create your own colored paper using watercolors. This last solution is more time-consuming, but you can achieve unique color combinations and textures this way. If you don't have any magazines at hand, but you plan to buy some, approach your shopping strategically. Start with looking for some inspiration, either by browsing Pinterest or your own photos, and think about the landscape you would like to create. After you decide on a topic, establish a color palette and have it in mind when visiting your local newsstand. Glance through some magazines and choose the ones that actually have a lot of colors that you need. For example, I knew I wanted to create a summery coastal landscape with waves, rocks and sand dunes, so I was on the lookout for a magazine full of warm, yellowish, beige, and bluish tones. And I found a lot of colors I need it in this architecture magazine. On a side note, don't be afraid to browse through magazines you normally wouldn't look at. I found a lot of beautiful colors and textures in home decor magazines. Even though I usually go for travel and arts related ones. In the next lesson, we will go for a treasure hunt and look for the most exciting colors and textures in our chosen magazines. 4. Relax while Gathering Paper: So I've promised you a relaxing art project and relaxing it shall be. Take your stack of magazines and get cozy on a sofa. Start flipping through them, looking for interesting colors, patterns, and textures in the photographs. Focus on the ones that speak to you the most and could be a good fit for your project. If you plan to create a seascape, for example, try to gather as many shades of blue as you can, so you have a lot of material to choose from later on. Once you find something you like, even if it's just a small part of a photograph, tear out the whole page, put it aside, and get back to browsing. I love this part of the process because it reminds me of a treasure hunt. You never know what you are going to find, and it's exciting to look at the photos and imagine how you could incorporate some elements into your future art project. And if you forget yourself and stop to read an article or two, that's okay. This is your self-care time, so make it as enjoyable as possible. 5. Release Stress while Preparing Scraps: Now is the time for the second part of our preparation, and if you are struggling with any negative emotions, you will love it. This destructive part of the process will help you to decompress and release some stress or anger you might be feeling. Take all the chosen pages and start tearing them to pieces, to separate the colors and patterns you see in photographs, especially if the edges between the areas are pretty sharp. So for example, here I have three different colors and textures, and I might use this and this one to create layers of sand in my collage, and this one to create some rocks. So I want to isolate them from each other like this. It's a good idea to organize the scraps by color and put them in different piles right away. This will make your art creation process much easier later on. In the following lessons, we will use these scraps to create some beautiful, nature inspired collages. 6. Get in the Flow with Striped Collage: So the easiest and the least time-consuming way to create a torn paper landscape collage, is to use stripes of paper to suggest the background, middle ground, and foreground of your composition. Torn paper edges will give your landscape an organic and natural feel. I find this technique perfect for designing simple yet beautiful, minimalistic seascapes. In this lesson, I will show you how to do precisely that. So let's start with sketching the lines that will indicate sky, water and sand. The proportions here depend on the final effect you want to achieve. You can divide the page into three equal parts, or focus on a large body of water with a little bit of sand at the bottom and some sky at the top. You can also emphasize the sky and minimize the other two parts of the composition. Or you can forego the sand completely and just focus on the sky and water. It's totally up to you. Now that you have your proportions established, it's time to browse through the stacks of newspaper scraps and select those you think would look best in your composition. Here I have chosen some gray scraps for the sky, different kinds of blue and green ones for the water, and some beige, orange and yellow ones with a nice texture for the sand. Now, arrange the scraps in an order you plan to use them, from top to bottom, and see how they work together. Follow your intuition and rearrange the scraps to your liking. Make sure that the colors and textures look good next to each other. There are no hard and fast rules here, so just choose what looks pleasing to you and don't let the indecision paralyze you. You're not the Michelangelo working on a ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, so just have fun and experiment a lot. When you are happy with your layout, it's finally time to create a collage. We will start with the sky and work our way down the page, overlapping the stripes and gluing them down one by one. So take the first paper scrap and put it against your background to establish the length you will need. Tear off the excess paper from the side. Now, decide on the height of your stripe and tear it off from the rest of the scrap. It's time to put the glue on the back of your first paper stripe. Be sure to use a lot of it and get it right to the edges. I'm using an additional piece of paper underneath here to keep my desk clean. When the stripe is covered with glue completely, press it hard to the background and smooth it down to ensure it sticks. Now, repeat the whole process with another scrap of paper. Notice that your stripes don't have to be totally straight. I'm making some of mine a bit wavy to emulate ocean waves. These jagged white edges remind me of seafoam, and I really love this effect. So if the stripe edge is too dark and crisp, I tear the paper a little more to achieve this look on purpose. Don't worry about these edges hanging from the sides for now. You will trim them with scissors later on. When gluing down each new stripe to the surface, make sure it overlaps with the previous one. This will add depth and dimension to your composition. Continue adding torn layers until you reach the bottom of your background. Once everything dries, flip your artwork over and use scissors to trim all the extra paper that went off the edges of your background. If you want to make this exercise even easier, place your composition in a middle of a page instead of filling the whole background with scraps of paper. This way, you won't even need scissors and you won't have to measure the stripes so precisely. What is more, the space around the landscape will serve as a natural frame for your finished artwork. The next step is totally optional, but you can finish your artwork by adding some details with ink pens and gel pens. Here I am embellishing the sand with some golden dots, and later on, I will add white bubbles and dots to indicate a seafoam. In the next lesson, I will show you how to create another seascape. A bit more complex this time, but equally fun to design. 7. Refocus with Layered Collage: In this exercise, instead of using abstract stripes, we will build our landscape with more specific shapes indicating elements of the natural world, like mountains, rocks or tree crowns. And we will layer them one upon another to suggest depth in the composition. This technique requires a bit more focus and planning, unless you like to improvise and just go with the flow. If you are working from a photo reference, try to break down the image into the most basic shapes and prepare some loose sketches in a notebook or on your iPad before starting the collage process. So I want to create another seascape, but this time I plan to add a faraway land on the horizon and a rocky shore in the foreground. It's good to have an overall composition in mind, but remember that creating too rigid and detailed sketches makes no sense as the torn paper technique in itself is loose and a bit random. Treat your sketch as guidance and leave the room for happy accidents. This way of working is much more fun. So I went ahead and chose some basic scraps for the sky, water, and sand. After blocking these large areas of color, I picked a gray scrap that would be perfect for indicating a blurry piece of land at the horizon. Then I have chosen some nice textured elements that could be used to create a rocky shore. As before, we will be working from the top of the page. So we will start with the sky, then add the faraway mountain range, then water, sand, and rocks at the very bottom. Tear out the shapes one-by-one and arrange them in the right order to see if you are happy with the composition. When building a landscape like that, be mindful of the color and texture combinations you choose. Before you glue anything down, make sure that there's enough contrast between the neighboring elements and that they look good together. Now that the most challenging part is over, it's time to glue all the pieces to the background and create a beautiful collage. After you glue everything down, flip the artwork over as before, and use scissors to trim all the extra paper. This exercise is a great way to refocus your mind. While you're at it, planning your landscape and making decisions on a minute-by-minute basis, you have no choice but to live in the moment, free from restless thoughts, even if only for a while. 8. Meditate with Mosaic Collage: The premise of this last technique I want to share with you today is quite simple. You will be tearing the paper scraps into small pieces and gluing them down to the background to create a mosaic effect. For this method, it's a good idea to outline all the landscape layers beforehand. This way, you can relax and fill them with different colors without thinking about the overall composition later on. The mosaic itself will look quite messy, so it's essential you maintain enough contrast between layers. Otherwise they will blend with each other too much and the composition will look bland and chaotic. So juxtapose heavily textured paper scraps with smooth ones, and ensure the neighboring colors aren't too similar. After you choose all the paper scraps for your landscape, you can tear them into small pieces beforehand and keep these tiny scraps sorted by colors and textures. This will speed up the whole process and it will make your life easier, unless you suffer from a hay fever and you will sneeze in the middle of creating the mosaic, in which case, all these tiny elements will scatter all over your desk and it will be a disaster. And yes, I am speaking from experience. So here I am filling subsequent layers of this meadow landscape with tiny scraps. I stick to the sketch lines and modify the shapes of individual scraps if needed, to squeeze them into previously planned space. When working with such small elements, I'm putting the glue on them like this, instead of laying them down on a piece of additional paper to smear them with glue. It's just easier and quicker this way, but also messier. It's a good idea to have a wet wipe or a cloth at hand so you can clean your fingers once in a while when they get too sticky. This collage method is easy but quite time-consuming, so you can treat this exercise as a form of meditation. You can also use this particular creative process to focus on positive affirmations. Just repeat them over and over in your head while gluing subsequent elements down to the surface. 9. Final Thoughts: Thank you so much for taking my class today. I hope you had fun watching it, and you will take the time to create your own torn paper landscape collage. I encourage you to try out all three techniques and see which one you enjoy the most. And if you have any questions, please leave the comment in the discussion section below, so I can help you out. If you discover, you would like to further explore these exercises and share the fun with your friends or kids, it's a good idea to create a system for storing your paper scraps for easy access in the future. I like the store mine in big envelopes divided by colors. You can also keep them in cardboard boxes or gathered in different sections of a ring binder. If you enjoyed this class and you are looking for more fun and relaxing exercises to try out during your self-care time, I invite you to check out some of my other classes. "Slow Drawing, Slow Living: Get in the Flow with Ocean Doodles" is a class that will help you clear your mind and turn your creative session into a truly magical experience filled with candles and calming sounds of ocean waves. If you love creating nature-inspired mixed media pieces you can "Unwind with Abstract Forest Illustrations in Watercolor and Ink" And if you want to stay tuned for my next classes, follow me here on Skillshare. So, happy creating and see you next time!