Watercolor collage class

My Fallbrook School of the Arts Watercolor Collage Students are creating some tremendous works and we've only just begun. On monday, we  took unfortunate, crummy, bad watercolor paintings and cut them up into small tiles. Boy, did that feel good! We all shared tiles and  seperated them by colors. Everyone had already painted a sheet of watercolor paper with a dark color, some with a metallic. This was our gluing surface.

 We started with a figurative image for a focal point. I showed them Laurie Mika's wondrous polymer works as examples.( Laurie and I are traveling to San Miguel de Allende along with Jane LaFazio and Lynn Leahy in October for our sold out Tesoro del Corazon  retreat!)

Here's a close up of the figure along with some ephemera. (note the coffee theme). We painted Daniel Smith's Transparent Watercolor ground over the figure. Once its dry, you can paint over the top to create tints.

You can also glaze over the tops of tile portions to tone down areas. I painted purple around the blue center pieces beneath the figure.

and here are fine examples of students work....beginning stages.....I can't wait to see the results.....

Artichoke de Colores y Purple Night

Chris Cozen http://www.chriscozenartist.com/taught a great workshop yesterday "Deconstructed Printing". We used Golden Open Acrylics with an extended drying time. Wonderful stuff to work with. I had a blast and created a bunch of new pieces that I can collage, use as pages for a book or a cover or two.....