Collage Work in Progress

Acrylic on boards, each 8 x 8 in.

I thought I'd keep you up to date on some trial paintings I've started, using collage. Inspired in part by the very enjoyable workshop led by Karen Stamper, I began laying out these two panels last week at Gateshead Art Society, then pasted down some selected bits of collage paper.

Over the week since then I've worked on them both, with a mixture of confidence, trepidation, frustration, and pleasure. There's no doubt that the panel with the most collage elements (the balcony with the washing) has proven to be the most difficult to move along. 

The collage elements changed the original subject in such a way that I had to adapt and change the composition to get it to work. As it is, I'm still struggling with parts of it (not helped by finding acrylic colours behaving slightly differently from my accustomed oil colours). I've no doubt that if I were to allow a greater degree of abstraction the problems would be lessened, but I'm still not much of an abstractionist.

Karen Stamper and the Concertina Sketchbook

It takes a lot to get me out of bed, dressed and breakfasted and onto a train by 8.43 am these days, but that's what happened last Saturday. I was on my way to York with fellow Sketch Crawler Richard to take part in a workshop led by Karen Stamper.

I've been looking at Karen's work for quite a while and wondering how she achieved the effects in her concertina sketchbooks, so when the opportunity to find out came up, I jumped at the chance.

And it was well worth the effort! I won't give away Karen's secrets - she has lots more workshops to give, I'm sure - but will say that she started us off slowly to get us over the natural trepidation most of us felt. Dribbling ink and squirting it with water while it runs down five or six pages of  the concertina must be a proven ice-breaker. After that it was just one bit of fun after another, involving PVA, gesso, frottage, markers, collage and some hard thinking.

I ended up with six pages of an abstracted townscape full of references to Crete. One of the fascinations of the concertina sketchbook is that as it's folded, new compositions come into view.

It was clear everyone enjoyed themselves and seeing the sketchbooks laid out together showed how individual the end results were. 

Pat and I have a long holiday in Chania planned for later this year and I can certainly see me using some of these techniques while I'm there. And I'll be watching out for the chance to take another of Karen's workshops!

#KarenStamperArt