Tag: Collage

ATC group

QI JANUARY-MARCH 2026

The brief: ‘Why not incorporate maps into the theme for this quarter?

Maps help us get from one place to another.  Maybe we use the paper map or perhaps you are dependent on GPS.  We map all sorts of things… we map out our day.  We have human maps of our bodies.  We have walking maps especially in tourist locations.  I am sure you can think of many ways we use maps.’

ATC size is 2.5 inches x 3.5 inches. I foraged for pictures of ancient maps, charts and plans in a huge book I bought from Oxfam for pennies. I made one big collage using the pictures and some titles and then cut the desired size cards from it.

Collage with Lynn Whipple

Here are the two collages I made for this short workshop. The under-layer is random scraps of ‘stuff’ to make a decorative base. You can’t see a lot of it remaining in the first one but the scraps are outlined with smudged pencil. The second one was done with coloured papers by Lynn but I didn’t have any so I used pictures torn from a Food magazine from Waitrose.

Lydia Rink Art Mixed Media Festival

I have been participating in this: 10 artists’ lessons and a Facebook page to show my results. Not everyone who was signed up posted their work which was a shame as it was nice to see what other people made of the demos. Here are the pieces I posted which I did in my A4 concertina sketchbook to keep them in one place. One demo was intended to be folded into a minibook and another was to make a triptych but otherwise it was okay done this size and the paper of the book is surprisingly resilient to gesso, ink, glue etc.

Concertina sketchbooks

I’ve been following some online workshops with Karen Stamper using these books. So far I’ve found the smallest too small, A5 just about right and A4 too big as it takes so long to do a spread and I can’t fit many pages on my table at once. I could turn each book over and complete the other side as well but I think I will just start a new book.

Landscape with allotments

Allotments come in all sorts of sizes and states of tidiness! There are ancient gardeners who can grow anything in tidy rows with no visible weeds, crazy plots where chickens grub up plants inside huge homemade wire cages, and the sadly neglected plots where, among the docks, nettles and couch grass, raspberries and blackberries struggle to see the light. (The currants have been gobbled up by pigeons and the lettuce by rabbits!)

A recent painting for sale.

Not waving

A weird sea picture with references to Gauguin and Stevie Smith
Not waving

I love this gloomy piece which evolved under my eyes. My visual memory was jerked by the beginnings of the hunched up figure and I found the image I recalled in a book about Gauguin (hero!) with a photo of a Peruvian mummy. I have always loved the poem by Stevie Smith  – hence the title.

Maybe all the horrifying stories of drownings in the Mediterranean influenced me as well. We can never know all the subconscious themes.

Image 10×8 inches (25.5×20 cm).

Y is for Yellow is nearly finished…

yellowblogbutton150and for my last series in the year (the 3rd series) I have been working on aspects of Eve, the apple and the snake (or variations).

All images are 8×10 inches (20×25.5 cm) and are in mixed media.   They are not intended to illustrate the bible story accurately!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.