Mixed Media, Collage, and Abstraction Workshop with Lisa MacLean

Break free from old art habits and/or develop a new expressive creative
practice. Using acrylic paints, mediums, stencilling, collage, pencils and
a variety of other materials, this class will expand your visual
vocabulary. Enjoy a dynamic and experimental process of artmaking and the
happy accidents that can take your ideas in new directions. Learn tips and
tricks for combining realistic and abstract imagery, collage and painting,
brushwork and handwork, loose and tight drawing and painting styles. Learn
how to integrate a variety of materials into expressive artworks. Expand
and enhance your approach to visual art with this mashup of techniques and
tools!

Day 1: Using a variety of mediums and techniques, we will experiment with
mixed media on different kinds of support, including a variety of papers,
mylar (acetate sheets), wood, matte board, etc. In addition to the
traditional collage gluing technique, we’ll explore a number of related
experimental processes, including decollage (peeling away pasted paper to
reveal hidden images or textures beneath), dechirage (tearing paper), and
grattage and sgraffito (scraping and scratching to create texture and
pattern).

Day 2: Explore varieties of abstraction and how formal contradictions and
polarities contribute to making compelling art. Experiment with light and
dark, positive and negative, atmospheric and hard-edge, gesture and
tracing, transparent and opaque, photographic and painterly, and other
kinds of art oppositions. Try your hand at an array of methods, including
staining, taping, scraping, glazing and gestural brushwork. Learn how to
successfully combine collage, mixed media, and abstraction. Those who are
interested can also learn to incorporate relief printmaking methods, such
as linocut and monoprint, into their art pieces.

Reference material will be supplied but feel free to bring your own
reference photocopies, stencils, photographs, printed images, sketches,
paintings, wallpaper or Japanese paper samples, printed texture/pattern
samples, found text, and/or magazine pages. Leave the class with a deeper
appreciation for abstraction, mixed media, collage, and some of the tools
to create it. No experience necessary.