- Nov 30, 2023
- 2 min read

Bounce Off Sketch

This sketch was prompted by a pile of collage paper scraps and some interesting shapes that I'd cut out from my printmaking dump sheets and then overprinted.

I thought I’d see how far I could go with just collage pieces to get started this time, before the urge to add paint got the better of me. It was looking a bit garbled to begin with, but at the start I was really just thinking about covering up the white paper.

I began with laying out the shapes on squares of paper but switched back to A3 paper as I felt the squares I had weren’t big enough for the size of shapes I was working with.

I’m played around with overlapping the pieces and wondered whether I could work just with the paper and no paint to make a purely collaged piece……but I thought the sticking down would be a major challenge!

I found the grey piece very interesting, I don’t think I’ve ever used grey consciously in a painting, though some of my neutral paint colours are shades of warm and cool greys. The big piece was most definitely grey and being a lover of more vivid colours, I wondered if I could work with it happily.

But I just bounced around with, and off, the shapes that I had, trying not to do too much cutting, but using the pieces as they were to see what I could make of them. I find there's an innate joy in shuffling pieces of paper around!

There had to be a circle or two in this sketch somewhere and I got the paint out to do some glazing so I could adjust the contrast and tweak the colours. Most of the grey became a subtle pinky colour, and the blue shapes just kind of fell into place towards the end because of other things that were happening. Maybe my dalliance with grey is over! I liked it, but not so much as to make it the dominant colour in the composition. The yellowy greens looked quite acidic which contrasted strongly with the soft pinks, which felt a bit new.

Anyway, enjoy the video and if you have any questions, pop them in the comments below!