Collage sketching

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Collage sketching

Looking through my work lately, it seems my subject matter is all over the place—from landscapes to buildings to figures, from urban sketching to concept art to portraits and abstracts. A not so kind inner voice might go on about how I have no focus (and what the hell are you doing?) but the deeper, much kinder voice tells me to just keep going.

I really can’t claim to know which voice will win, but in the meantime I decided to take yet another turn and play with collage cut outs—if for no other reason

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This collage grid makes my heart sing

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This collage grid makes my heart sing

This was one of the warm-ups that I completely lost myself in last week. The work is rough and the paper in this sketchbook is thin so you can see marks coming through from behind. It’s not by any means complete. It’s just a drafty warm-up grid of collage sketches.

But. I love it so.

Part of every art journey is discovering who you are as an artist. That’s part of the fun. Trying new subjects and mediums in different ways, different contexts and slowly learning your own preferences. Learning what it is you like to make—no, have to make—and how.

This is the creative journey. And I believe this is how we find our natural, innate style.

So this little grid of collages

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Weekly Warm-ups - Abstract Collage

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Weekly Warm-ups - Abstract Collage

Last week I decided [daily warm ups) to restructure daily warm ups in my art practice to see if I can overcome the obstacle of, well, not doing it. While I know intellectually that warming up with simple practice exercises primes the well and adds important play and practice time, I avoided warm ups more often than not.

So last week I tried my new approach, which is to

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Daily warm-ups—a new to me approach

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Daily warm-ups—a new to me approach

One of the things I’m instituting in my art practice—or at least re-committing to—is a daily warm-up in my sketchbook (practice and play). The problem I’ve come up against before when I try to open with a daily warm-up is that I skip it.

The blank page looms, I don’t know what I want to do that day—so I don’t. I either have other art projects in progress or I have an idea for some final piece, and I launch into those instead.

But practice and play for no other reason than to practice and/or play is an important part of an art practice, i know that, both for building skills and discovering new ideas. Not to mention fun.

So I think I have the answer. I’m going to

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Online art classes I’m taking now

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Online art classes I’m taking now

I keep mentioning different online classes, so I thought I’d list my current online learning here in case you might want to look into them:

Carla Sonheim’s Yearlong Class 2022

Each month of the year a different guest artist shares their process and we create in that style, including filling the map shown above with our own art representing each month. We also

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