A little collage tutorial

I just recently signed up for a course by Diane Culhane called “For the Love of a Tree“. There was just something about it that was calling to me. Maybe it’s because I live in a little forest of firs. Trees are just so amazing in so many ways.

Did you know that when I was a kid, I saved a large tree from being logged in the forest behind my childhood home? I did. It was my grandma’s idea that I should draw a sign and pin it to the tree to appeal to the loggers. And that little sign saved the tree from being logged. I wish I had a copy of that sign. I believe it had an image of a tree crying. My dad said that years later he saw it when he went to the office for a wood permit hanging up behind the desk. Awww.

Anyway, all that to say that I found Diane Culhane. I love her work and I signed up for her newsletter. In doing so she sends out a link to a video on how to do this little collage piece. And that’s what I did tonight for fun. I’m really enjoying collage.

I wanted to share the process with you in case you want to make one too. It’s super fun and super easy.

I grabbed a piece of thicker card stock paper. And a magazine. I ripped out a bunch of pieces that had colors and textures that appealed to me and glued them down…

It ended up like this....

Then I grabbed a big black Sharpie paint pen and drew a scene over the collage. A simple car, road, house, flower, tree and fence. Then I got out my gesso – and with a very thin layer painted over the collage.

I touched up some of the black lines with my paint pen when I was done and added some stamping and some pink in the hearts and yellow for the dots in the road but this is what it ended up looking like after I was done…