(upbeat music)
-: Hi, I'm Carina del Rosario.
I'm cultural worker and visual teaching artist.
Thanks for joining me today to make some art.
Last time, I introduced you to one of my favorite artists
Romare Bearden.
And we did some quick sketches of places
that
either,
where we live or are important to us.
So here's my sketch from last time, the Chief Sealth Trail,
where I live in Beacon Hill.
Today, what we're gonna need are pair of scissors,
glue stick,
one big piece of paper that's gonna serve as your base,
and then a bunch of recycled papers.
In front of me, I've got some origami paper.
I've got an envelope.
Envelopes are great 'cause inside,
there are usually some patterns in there.
I've got newspapers and catalogs.
I know a lot of people don't like junk mail
but it's kind of handy for me.
So that's what we're gonna do today,
is repurpose some of the materials
that we have on hand wherever we are.
Let's talk a little bit more though
about Romare Bearden, and how he made his amazing collages.
So, Romare Bearden would draw his neighborhood in Harlem,
and then he would transform it
into this piece of artwork called the block.
And you'll notice that he's got the basic ideas
down from his original sketch,
but he had left himself room to use his imagination
and include all kinds of characters
and happenings on the block.
So that's what we're gonna do today.
We're gonna use our imagination,
but base it on something in reality.
We're gonna take our sketch
and transform that into a collage.
Now, a collage is a type of art-making
where you take a number of materials,
in this case we're taking our recycled papers
and you basically cut, tear, arrange,
and glue those down onto a base.
Collage is really fun
because it seems like it's gonna be easy,
but because we're basing it on something in reality,
we can really make it much more interesting
instead of having a bunch of random pieces of paper
cut up and stuck onto a paper.
So before we start with our own collage project,
let's take a moment to look
at another one of Romare Bearden's collages.
This one is from his grandparent's home in North Carolina.
What do you notice?
What shapes do you see?
Do you notice how
the colors pop out at different parts?
Yeah, Bearden uses contrasting colors
so that there are some sections
that will make it easier for you to recognize
that it's transitioning from one thing to something else.
So it's transitioning from the shoulder
of his great-grandmother to the wall.
We're gonna think about that or keep that in mind
when we're making our own art.
We're gonna think about colors and shapes.
And another thing that I notice in Romare Bearden's work
is texture.
Texture is what something might feel like
if you could touch it.
So he's using
papers or
material that has some light and dark parts to it,
so it gives us this idea of texture.
So we're gonna use that, colors, shapes and texture,
and we're also gonna use contrast, opposites.
Contrast could be
having something dark against something light,
having something that's solid
next to something that's really patterned or printed.
So we're gonna keep that in mind
when we're making our own collage.
So let's go back to this drawing,
this quick sketch that I made of the Chief Sealth Trail.
I'm gonna start by using the background.
So up here was the sky.
So I'm gonna look for some papers
that have a lot of blue in it.
And you know, these are catalogs that I had found,
and it's gonna be okay that they have stuff on it.
I just need blue.
So I'm gonna start by cutting out the parts of my background
'cause I'm gonna be layering some things on top.
I'm not gonna worry too much right now about
shape.
I just want color.
I'll add the shape a little bit later
once I kind of
figure out how much blue I'm gonna need.
All right.
Don't want to make it too obvious that it's a shirt,
so I'm gonna take the label out.
I'm referencing my sketch.
So I'm gonna get some blue down on the paper.
It's about, it's about enough blue, I think.
I think I want to cover a little bit more this way.
And because
I'm combining all these different papers,
and it's gonna cover the whole top,
I'm being pretty loose
with my cutting 'cause I'm just gonna
cover it all up like that, okay.
Gonna wait to glue it down until I
am ready.
So now we have this part here
that's gonna be the grass of the field.
So I'm gonna look for some greens.
Here you go.
Ha, grass for grass, what do you know?
And I might even just tear it.
Sometimes when you tear a paper that's colored,
you get this fun little white edge,
so that can help kind of delineate
or separate the blue part from the green part.
I'm just going to tear some more here,
just lining things up.
I'm gonna need some more green for the other part.
Oh, that one's got a cat in it.
I'm not gonna tear up the cat.
More green.
(paper ripping)
Okay.
And then I'm gonna need to fill this up over here as well.
So we'll just
have some more.
Now, if this were a cooking show,
I would have like a finished pie
waiting underneath this table, but we're just making art
'cause I wanted to make this, all right.
Okay, it looks like I may need
a little bit more green there.
(upbeat music)
So because I am filling my background up,
I'm just kind of patching together
different blues and greens.
So it's okay that they're going to overlap with each other.
It's okay that they're from different kinds of papers.
That actually adds some more interest.
I'm gonna be gluing smaller pieces right on top of it,
layering over.
So,
that's why I'm not too concerned
about how rough the background is looking.
I mean, I could be pickier,
but I'm not too worried about it.
And I think that's the joy of making collage,
is that because you're using recycled materials,
nothing is too precious.
It can be torn up, papered over.
All right.
So I have a pretty
solid background with blues
for the sky,
and a variety of greens
for the grass,
okay.
It doesn't look like much right now,
but we'll transform it into something.
So I'm gonna look at my reference drawing again
of the Chief Sealth Trail.
And I'm gonna focus on
these electrical towers,
and then some of these houses here,
and then also this pathway.
So,
I'm gonna look for maybe black,
black or grays
to represent the electrical towers.
So I could
use the inside of this envelope.
So maybe I'll start with that.
(scissors snipping)
You can if you want use a ruler
to draw straight lines,
and then I typically use a pen,
just 'cause it's a little bit easier to see than pencil
when I'm drawing over paper that's got some print on it.
So I'm just using a black fine point marker for that,
so then I can see my lines.
Like I said, the inside of envelopes
can sometimes be really interesting to use.
(upbeat music)
One thing you want to remember
when you're using glue sticks is
try to protect the stuff that's underneath.
So I will usually use some scratch paper,
and then
do my gluing on top of that.
And each time I'll find a new spot.
That way, I'm not getting glue all over the place.
And I don't
end up getting glue all over the furniture too.
(upbeat music)
All right, so I have most of the pieces down on my,
of my collage.
I think what I need to do is,
I put this a little bit to high, the electrical towers,
so I'm gonna fill that up with a little bit more green
so I can get a slope, and then I'm gonna add a path.
Okay, so we're almost there.
(upbeat music)
And then I went over my paper.
That looks kind of messy to me,
so I'm gonna straighten that out by trimming it.
(upbeat music)
I still want to take the time
to make it look good and finished.
I don't want to have it
feel
as messy as I
started it in the end.
So then I'm going to need to do a path here.
And this is when it's gonna be helpful
to mark up my
path with a pen.
So I'm going to
use my black marker
to draw out some curved lines,
so that when I cut it,
I can be a little bit more precise.
(upbeat music)
The part that's a little tricky if you're using marker
is that I don't like it showing up in my final product,
so
I will trim it away
so it's not so obvious.
(upbeat music)
So the thing with collage
is that even though I have this reference drawing,
even though I
remember
specific things about my time walking along this trail,
I can still use my imagination
to add something that maybe wasn't there.
So I noticed when I was looking
through my recycled materials
that there were some pretty funny animal ones.
So I'm gonna put some animals
on the trail that wouldn't normally be there
'cause why not, right?
Let's see.
Ha ha.
I'm going to put...
So because
this little animal that I am cutting out
is a little bit dark,
I'm gonna leave some of the
white part of the paper around it,
so that it sort of works like an outline,
and it'll make it easier to see
when I have it glued down against the darker background.
So again, we want to use some contrast
to help distinguish the different papers that we're using,
the different objects we're trying to represent.
So, I think this is a little,
I don't know, a little creature that's parachuting,
so I'm gonna have a parachuting animal
into my field.
I'm gonna
have a little parachuting animal.
And then I think I'm gonna have one more object
in the foreground.
I think I saw some chickens in here.
So I'm gonna,
again just use my imagination to
add a little bit more interest
into the picture.
I think that one, let's do this one instead.
Usually when you want to add something
that's gonna be down in the bottom,
which is considered the foreground,
we kind of want to make it a little bit bigger.
So I think,
just for
kicks...
See this part right here on the path,
it looks kind of empty to me.
(paper rips)
And even though it's nice that it stands out,
it feels a little too blank.
Maybe, and sometimes with collage,
it's okay to again, experiment, see what works.
If you don't glue things down right away,
then you can just see how it looks.
And if you don't like how it looks,
you just get it out of the way.
So, I was gonna put this little picnic basket here,
but it feels a little too busy.
So instead, I'm just going to use this other picture
of some people.
(scissors snipping)
Maybe I will
put them along the trail.
Oops.
I think just one will do.
All right.
(scissors snipping)
When you do your own collage,
you can either use the picture that I used
of the Chief Sealth Trail.
You can use your own sketch of that.
Or you can do it with any picture of a place
that's important to you.
The thing that makes art-making
important to me and special to me
is it can give me some time to think about
places and people that
are special to me.
So that when I am feeling,
I don't know, whatever, anxious or blue,
I can focus my energies on thinking about them.
So here's my
collage.
And just so we can compare with
my original drawing,
okay, there might be,
we might go back and add some dark lines here.
But here's the electrical towers,
we used some lines for that.
I used some,
a shape here out of green paper to represent a tree,
a few different shapes here to represent
the houses along that path.
This one here,
I might actually go back and do in a brighter color
'cause there's not a lot of contrast,
so it kind of blends into the grass.
So I might go back and replace that.
We have this curved area here
that is a contrasting color from the green grass.
Yeah, so we used color, shapes, lines.
We used some texture,
and then we also used some contrast to differentiate
the different parts of our scene.
So, that's it for now on our collage,
inspired by Romare Bearden.
I hope you can go and find a place that is special to you,
and make some art inspired by that.
Thanks for joining me.
Again, I'm Carina del Rosario.
I am a cultural worker and teaching artist.
See you next time!
(upbeat music)