Struck At The Heart

I have been watching him demonstrate his process. Today, he gave us our homework:  Make two pieces in your journal. The second piece should be created with a particular idea or goal in mind. But the first piece should be done “without thinking” — Do not have any plan in mind — Get out a bunch of your materials and “just start”.

This is new for me. I have always loved collage so I have lots of “stuff” on hand, but I’ve always had some idea of where I wanted to go. This time, I took Seth at his word and challenged myself.

I quickly went through my collage basket and pulled out any images that caught my fancy. There were florals and some colourful cottagey things. There were some neat backgrounds and textures that I liked. I went through materials and pulled out old tracing paper and some tissue paper in various colours. I pulled out a set of paint crayons, some markers, an ancient stamp pad, a few stencils, and some craft paints that I had never opened — I  chose three earthy colours. A ratty old brush and since this was an “experiment”, I chose some old Modge Podge for gluing instead of my “good” matte medium.

And then I just started.  Seth said, “Start light with colour – you can always go darker.”

I created the background by brushing paint onto an old piece of watercolour paper and then pushing it down on my page like a transfer – “so you don’t have a lot of control”, said Seth. Some of the paper’s surface actually pulled off and stuck to my journal page. That’s okay.

Then I reached for materials. I ripped pieces of earthy-coloured tissue and glued them down wherever I wanted, no thinking! Stencils – I surprised myself by grabbing one I had never used before, and stenciled parts of it here and there. Then some magazine images – a stark black and white piece that was arrow shaped and fit beside the tissue. I grabbed a stamp from an old set and made random stampings. I really didn’t know where this was going.