 I'm Karina Del Rosario. I'm a 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 south trail where I live in Beacon Hill. Today what we're gonna need are para-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 because 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 kinda 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 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 just 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 grandparents' 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 color, 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 self 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 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 because 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. Don't wanna 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. That's about enough blue I think. I think I wanna 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 because I'm just gonna cover it all up like that. 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. There you go. Grass for grass, what do you know? And I might even just tear it. Sometimes when you tear 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. I'm more green. 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 the finished pie waiting underneath this table, but we're just making art because I wanted to make this. Okay, looks like I'm gonna need a little bit more green there. 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. So I have a pretty solid background with blues for the sky and a variety of greens for the grass. Okay, 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 self 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 or gray to represent the electrical towers. So I could use the inside of this envelope. So maybe I'll start with that. 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. One thing you wanna 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. All right, so I have most of the pieces down of my collage. I think what I need to do is I put this a little bit too high the electrical tower, 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. And then I went over my paper, it looks kinda messy to me so I'm gonna straighten that out and by trimming it I still want to take the time to make it look good and finished. I don't wanna have it feel as messy as I started it in the end. So then I'm gonna 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. 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. 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 on the trail that wouldn't normally be there because why not, right? 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 wanna 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, a little parachuting animal. I think I'm gonna have one more object in the foreground I think I saw some chickens in here. So 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 wanna add something that's gonna be down in the bottom which is considered the foreground we kinda wanna 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. 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 gonna use this other picture of some people. Just one will do. When you do your own collage you can either use the picture that I used of the Chief Self 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's 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 just so that we can compare with my original drawing. Okay, there might be, I might go back and add some dark lines here but here's the electrical towers. We use some lines for that. We, I use some, a shape here out of green paper to represent the tree, a few different shapes here to represent the houses along the path. This one here, I might actually go back and do in a brighter color because 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 use color, shapes, lines. We use some texture and then we also use some contrast to differentiate the different parts of our scene. So that's it for now on our collage inspired by Romero 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 Karina Del Rosario. I'm a cultural worker and teaching artist. See you next time.