Demo: Lisa Takahashi - Landscape in Mixed Media

A lively demo from Lisa. She explained that she worked mostly in printmaking at the moment and used collage to help her plan her print designs. Collage forced her to organise her compositions using big, bold shapes. It also made it easier to plan the light values - where the darks, mediums and lights should go to lead the eye around her picture.

Her inspirations were Matisse’s exuberant cut outs, and Julian Trevelyan’s collages.

She began, using a photograph as her inspiration. She had already painted some sheets of cartridge using acrylic or watercolour in the various shades of green, brown, tan. The brush strokes were very clear on these papers as these strong directional marks added energy to the composition.

She also had oil pastel, Derwent colouring pencils and gouache sticks to hand for any additional marks.

She began, as always by dividing her paper into thirds to aid composition. She than worked on cutting and tearing her shapes to develop her composition, sometimes drawing her shape on tracing paper and then putting it on top of her colour. Her focus was on the shapes, simplifying and flattening, responding to what was developing on the picture rather than copying the photograph.

Workshop 27th June: Lisa explained that artists should bring their own photographs, and that creating the collage papers would be part of the process. If you would like to join us, book here: