Wanderlust: collection of ideas

Series: Wanderlust 2021 #10

When I started doing mixed media, I started collecting things. A variety of paints, pencils, powders and other ways of making marks and laying down colour. Then there are all the papers, patterned and plain, old books and maps, and digital versions of vintage papers ready to print out. And that’s before I started combining them to make my own collage papers. Not to mention fabrics, ribbons, lace and threads, and all the things that would otherwise be discarded but might “come in useful”.

Then there are all the ideas. YouTube videos of techniques I want to try. An interesting process someone described on their blog. Thoughts that made themselves known at three in the morning. Notebooks full of scribbled ideas gathered over the years.

This lesson is a kind of homage to all those collected elements. A stack of papers and fabrics — including handwritten notes and embroidery — held in place on a soft painted background by loosely sketched leaves. I grew up in the countryside and nature is the one theme that I always return to.

Some people chose to fix their papers to the page so that they could all still be seen. I decided to glue them down in their stack. This was a deliberate choice. The thoughts on the note served their purpose as they were being written and everything else is there to help create the finished page, there is no need to put each individual piece under a spotlight. And it’s good practise to commit to using the things I’ve collected — it’s too easy to fall into the trap of keeping things because I’ve only got one of them or they’re too nice to use; they stop being art supplies at that point…

Class:

• Wanderlust 2021
• Theme: ephemera
• Teacher: Renee Mueller (website, Instagram)