How to get them interested?

By them I refer to the members of my art group..... I am running a workshop in three weeks time on the subject of collage, and I want to make sure that I have wetted their appetites for this art form.

Now those of you who know my work, will realise that I normally work on a 2.5 X 3.5 inch format (ATC / ACEO) when I am collaging. I have done one larger collage before now but I tend to discount that as a one-off, so having got the group to agree to an evening workshop on collage, I thought that I should at least make some effort to raise their awareness of it in fine art.



So this week, I took along a magazine ( actually a National Trust Magazine) and announced that I was going to do a collage. I started ripping pages out of the magazine and then ripping up the pages to give me some "stuff" to work with. In fact because of what the magazine was the pictures and images were fairly well themed especially the long article on the location for filming Jane Eyre.

I lay the scraps out onto a card base and arranged them to give what I thought was a pleasing background. There were one or wo enquiring glances but I was mostly left to my own devices. Once the layout seemed OK I got out my gluestick and started to stick everything down with gusto ( and lots of glue), still not a lot of attention....mmmm

Once the background was complete I started arranging the images I had selected. Buildings, a tree, Jane and Heathcliffe, the graveyard , etc. Then again a session with the glue sticks. One or two people actually came across now and wanted to see how (or what) I was doing. The drawing over the graveyard was a late addition to push it into the background, but as this left too much focus on the foreground ( and around the edges) I found a couple of vintage looking adverts and added these in the top centre of the picture.

Lastly, and on standing back, I decided upon the title; and added that across the top left to offset the still too busy foreground. A few touches with some crayons to push back the title and add colour to the drawing completed the picture. All finished by time to clean up and people were now going out of their way to see the completed article.

Next week I hope to add another collage art work and do something along the lines of a Matisse.
Art student may recognise the above work as typical of the style of Richard Hamilton. Many other artists in this field can be found in the Wiki paedia article.