Let's Talk Art Blog

There's nothing like a little collage exercise to explore interesting textures, contrasts and compositions! Using leftover pieces from the gel prints I did for my Dusty Summer sketch I spent a happy couple of hours putting together there small A5 sized collages, to add to my 'Wall of Curiosities.' Working with collage always feels a little simplistic as it's one of the earliest art making methods we're introduced to as kids in school.

Continuing with my colour explorations in paint and with my gel plate! The colour focus for this sketch was the triad of Red-Violet, Blue-green and Yellow-Orange. These are colours I haven't used before as a combination and part way through making the painting I decided to get out the gel plate to create some collage material in suitable colours. So this Blog post includes both processes! My discovery of the day was these organic leaf/flower-like shapes that appeared when

Some may say I'm a dreamer.....and maybe I am, but re-imagining is the artist's way. I've been busy with my wall of 'signposts', not only creating new sketches to add to it, but beyond the instinctive making-in-the-moment, also making notes about how each little new creation might show me a way forward.

Red, Yellow and Blue are intense primary colours and used altogether in their raw form are fairly overwhelming! But with the addition of plenty of white, more pastel shades are achieved that work beautifully together. The pure colours add a lively pop of colour. This sketch evolved from some leftover drawing pieces from my Portal Series and began with lots of bright colour.

'Triad' sounds other-worldy, like something from a scif-i movie, but whilst these colour harmonies can be challenging to work with, they're not that scary! Continuing with my colour exercises and using my colour wheel for reference, I've been exploring options for 'triads'.

I started this sketch with blind contour drawing, just looking at what I could see from my workbench to get some shapes down on the paper. And then this one went for a real wander! There is a long messy middle to this one as I played around with balancing the colour triad of Yellow-Green, Red-Orange and Blue-Violet. The challenging colour palette and very few printed collage papers in my stash in these colours, led to me using plenty of paint on this one.