Tag: Collage

Building a Page

Dear Liza,

I am still playing in the journal Ruthie Inman got me started on a month ago. The cover is made of tissue paper built- up on fabric with thinned white glue, and has these pinks and greens.

I got quite a few of the pages done,

and then it was time to sew it all together. Using the awl and thread Ruthie sent me last year, I followed her directions and pierced and sewed the pages into the cover.

But I still had the center pages, the double page spread, completely blank. I wanted it to reflect the soft pinks and greens that are in the rest of the book, but couldn’t find collage materials I liked.

Finally, I painted them myself, using watered down acrylic paint. A sea green and a phthalo green gave me the look I wanted.

I kept building up layers of tissue paper, tissue leaves from napkins and such, trying for a sort of dreamy landscape look.

Then I made a mistake. I thought these pink worm-like bits of magazine paper would fit in, so I glued them down. The next morning, I realized that they were a bad choice. It took a few days for me to figure out how to fix it.

I got brave and used an exact-o knife to trim to awful pink bits away and repair the scratches with bits of deeper pink tissue. I like that every layer shows the layers underneath.

Now I have the dreamy landscape I wanted. I might find something else to add to it, someday. But for now, I love it.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Sister Corita and Me

Dear Liza,

Back in March, I got some books about Sister Corita Kent for my birthday. As you might suspect, Corita was a Catholic nun. She was also an artist and teacher at the progressive (as far as Catholic institutions go) Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles back in the 1960s.

I will not attempt a detailed biography here. There are dozens in print and online, by folks who have done their research.

What I want to talk about is how some of Corita’s “Ten Rules’ have affected me and my art.

Number 4. Consider everything an experiment.

I know Crazy Quilts are an OLD thing, but mine is a NEW thing, at least to me. Combining piecing, embroidery, beading and quilting in one totally original creation big enough for two people to snuggle under was a seven month expeiment. It worked out pretty well.

Number 6. There are no mistakes. There is no win and no fail.

This is comforting to me, after years in the classroom where I dreaded making mistakes in front of my students. Knowing I can learn from everything makes me braver.

Number 7. The only rule is the work. It is people who do all the work all the time that figure things out.

For the past few years, with help from Auntie Bridgett and Ruthie Inman, I have been reading, thinking and experimenting with art. The stitches in my Crazy Quilt were an experiment. Laying down layers of collage, then tissue, then ink. Three dimensional constructions covered in paper mosaics… all experiments. I like some better than others, but I learned from them all.

And, as Sister Corita promised, I am figuring things out.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Pages for The New Journal

Dear Liza,

Once we had the journal cover made, it was time for pages. Since this isn’t a journal for writing, but for doing art in, we were free to experiment.

I started gluing images down to scrap paper, which is always fun. Making THIS piece of junk mail look spiffy by sticking on THAT piece of old napkin is very satisfying.

When the pages were dry, I lined them up with the butterfly cover. I love the way the greens and soft pinks go together.

But wait a second! That cartoon dude is SO out of place! He looks like he got into the book through an unlocked window. He’s adorable, but he’ll have to wait for another project.

I kept looking, and more images kept showing up. This little girl and part of a watch face came together nicely. It needs something else, but it will come.

The Zoom Art group got together again this morning and I added this landscape over the splattered page. Not bad, but as it is here, it felt unfinished.

I put it aside and went on with the day. When Cousin Kestrel came over this afternoon, I asked her for advice. She suggested a setting sun with some rays, and I gave it a try.


I love it! Thanks, Kes!

This page of text strips goes with the color scheme and looks suitably cryptic. The splatters add a little character. As I told Ruthie, “Splattery will get you anywhere!”

And that’s the newest art journal so far.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Makin’ Boxes with Ruthie

Dear Liza,

My friend Ruthie Inman is always finding new ways to challenge our little zoom art group. This week she asked us to get a cream cheese box so we could cover it and make it pretty and useful.

The silvery coating on the box was very slippery and needed lots of gesso before it would take any paint. My first idea was to paint the whole thing bright orange and then collage over it. I didn’t take a picture, but trust me, it was awful.

I asked YOU and you said i should paint the whole thing black and figure out what to do next. So I did, and here’s what came next : really beautiful paper cut into teeny tiny bits.

I love mosaics, and black always looks good between bright colors. I got the top covered while Ruthie, Zoe and I chatted.

And to make the inside pretty, I found some gold foil (it came wrapped around pears at Christmas) and cut it to fit the bottom of the box.

This box still isn’t finished…. The black parts aren’t pretty and it needs a clasp to keep it closed.

And speaking of works in progress, I did another experiment with boxes… this time, a Yogi tea box. I was thinking of using it instead of the cream cheese box.

But as I held it, it felt too flimsy to be of any use. maybe I could reinforce it? I pulled apart the glued corners and laid it flat, laid tissue paper over the whole thing, front and back, with Mod Podge medium, then put it back together. It is stronger, but is still in its slightly-lumpy-tissue state.

But fear not. All will be well…and if it isn’t, I am only out a few cents of Mod Podge.

I am so glad I get to do artsy stuff with Ruthie!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Adding To My Time

Dear Liza,

A while back I showed you the start of a collage book in whichI will try and illustrate all the stages of life. For whatever reason, the first page I did was close to the end…

So I decided to go back to the beginning.

Choosing what to call the stages was my first challenge, but I went with my first inspirations. From Preconsciousness through Puberty to Oblivion and Joy, I printed them out and put them on the inside cover. Because I was sloppy, the page didn’t come out quite like I wanted, but it will do for now. The beauty of collage is that I can paper it over and do it again.

For my first stage of life, I started with Preconsciouness, when we are growing but not aware of anything yet. I got the images from a Time Life book called The Body from the 1960s and added some tissue paper and paint speckles.

I haven’t done “Comfort” or “Cognition” because I can’t see them in my mind yet, so the next one I have is “Organization”, when we are figuring out how people and things are the same and different..

As you can see, babies can get some things wrong. They might think butterflies are flowers, or that a stuffed dog is a real dog.

The next page is about learning to talk, with jumbles of words overlapping each other.

The next page I have (almost) finished is Mobility. I imagine this is what it must have felt like, balancing on our own two feet for the first time. A precarious, dangerous step that we all needed to take.

Those are all the pages I have done for now. This is a long term project and I work on it as ideas come to me.

Love,

Grandma Judy

May Flowers, Part 2

Dear Liza,

Once Ruthie Inman got us started on her May Flowers project, we had some more paper-collecting to do. White with black text, black with white text, and red with any color of text.

I started with the background, made of dozens of bits of white and off white with small black text.

I like the way the tiny lettering faded into the background.

Then the fiddly bits need to be dealt with. Cutting red, black and blue bits to fill in the bike, tire and some last minute orange for the basket tested my scissor skills. That done, it looked like a proper bicycle. Proper, but too plain.

I trimmed the flowers from weeks ago so they fit better, placed, placed, and re-placed them around the basket, and finally glued them down. I like the way they spill out! A few leaves cut from the same painted text topped it off.

I finished it by putting the spokes in the wheel, and was very happy with the results. Now, on to the next project!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Changing Journals

Dear Liza,

I have fallen in love with keeping an Art Journal.
For a long time, I was intimidated by trying to do ART that was good enough for a BOOK.

But now I see it differently. It is a way to corral my art of a certain period, so I don’t end up with a floating cloud of sketches and color experiments. It also can show my growth as an artist, like we used to keep student portfolios… baby pictures growing to better pictures. (With a fair number of screw-ups in between, of course.)

When I retired, Krista Sabaska gave me a large format journal as a retirement gift. I started using it in 2021. It started out as an “Art with Liza” journal, for drawings we did together during our Zoom calls. You would give me a phrase and I would draw it. This one was “The Paranoid Android is surprised.”

As time went on, it became a place where I could put ideas for other projects. I made a bunch of sketches for Cousin Kestrel’s Christmas present in 2021, then stuck them in the Journal so I would have them all together.

I got more comfortable with making art in the Journal as my insecure ‘student’ brain got used to the fact that I was not going to be graded! It is MY book.
I used it for processing lots of ideas, like you moving to Denmark…

And me getting older, by keeping my birthday celebration alive in a collage.

And now, the inevitable has happened.
This friendly Journal with a year and a half of art in it … is full. But I can’t stop keeping an Art Journal! It is fun, gives me a place to doodle, and makes me brave by keeping my ideas safe from prying eyes.

Fortunately, Auntie Katie gave me this Journal years ago, and it has been waiting for me.

I knew I needed to do some collage in it right away, to break the ice and introduce myself. The first two pages are very much where my brain is…

And I think we are going to be friends.

Love,

Grandma Judy

2023 Garden Journal

Dear Liza,

Well, a new year in the garden means a new garden journal.

This year, I am using a calendar book that Auntie Bridgett had laying around. After making my journal from scratch two years running, it was time for something new.

I painted the front with acrylics and have decorated the inside with acrylic color scraping (with an old credit card) and writing, using yellow, blue, sea foam green, and some metallic silver. And watercolor.

And a little collage for fun.

I wrote the first page on March 15, knowing it was too early, too cold and too wet to plant. Besides, we were heading out for our big vacation.

Two weeks later, when we returned from cold, dry, windy Denmark, we found cold, wet and windy Portland waiting for us. The dark blue page is hard to read, but really showed my mood. The cartoon is from a Dutch magazine, and asks if it is STILL raining, or raining AGAIN.

On April 20, my Spring Fever could wait no longer. I pulled out the wagon, bundled up, and slogged through some real rain to Portland Nursery.

I’ve decided to keep the receipts from things I buy for the garden, so I can see how much my “free” veggies are costing me.

And fittingly enough, Saturday was Earth Day! So after we chatted, I put the red oak leaf lettuces and dahlias in the ground.

Here’s the reality and my watercolor interpretation of the lettuce bed.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Back to Collage

Dear Liza,

I had a lot of fun making the illustrations for your story, and I learned a lot about composition and color while I was doing it. Now I’m back to making postcards with it.

I used one of the first drafts of the ‘people’ in your story for this one, along with the intense colors from our Portland Art Museum magazine. The words are the packaging from the Awesome Socks I get every month from your dad. I love their motto, “Don’t forget to be awesome!”

This cutie-pie pirate skeleton dude was in an Animation magazine and just needed an acrylic speckled beach and some vivid sky, again from our PAM magazine. The tricky part was cutting out all those skinny bones! The sun helped fill up that bare corner.

Auntie Bridgett’s adorable cartoon of an artist’s mannequin was in a years-old pile of scrap paper. I used it and a page from an out-of-the-garbage Rand McNally Atlas to make this card about heading your way soon.

My most recent project is the cover for my travel journal for the trip. Pages from the Atlas, joined with a fashion eyeglass picture, a scene from the AAA travel magazine, and a bunch of words made it look just right.

And yes, I admit to altering the map of Europe so that Amsterdam and Paris would fit in the same pair of glasses! So sue me.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Tying Up Loose Ends

Dear Liza,

I have been working on the illustrations for your story, “Adventure Grandma”, for months now. It has taken a long time because I have no training in art or design and am making the whole thing up as I go.

I started with drawings, but they were not as bold as I wanted.

Then I tried collages made of ‘found’ papers from magazines and packages, but it was too much of a mishmash.

I wanted all the pages to go together, to have some elements in common, so I painted my own. A strong red, soft yellow and several different blues and greens did the trick. For the abstract people, I painted a little orange and lots of black on several sheets of mixed media paper.

Then I designed pictures that had diagonal lines, to show movement and action.

I am very happy with how the illustrations have turned out!
Now I am doing hand to hand combat with my computer to get the story printed out the way I want. I promise it will be ready for you in Spring!

Love,

Grandma Judy