'Art Materials Play' workshop
Join us to get messy with your art materials and create abstract sketches - Thursday 12th March, 6pm (GMT)
Hello!
If you’re new here, a very warm welcome to you. I’m Emma, an artist and illustrator, based in rural England and my work is influenced by wildlife, stories and those small but significant, moments of connection with nature.
The Creative Flock is a seasonal, slow, and nature-loving space to sketch, share, and grow together 🌿 As well as practical advice, I share oodles of encouragement, inspiration and support as you explore your own creative path.
‘Art Materials Play’ Workshop
I used to run these playful sessions more regularly, and they were always popular, I think because we love an excuse to get messy with our art materials now and then, and they are great for loosening up our process and making new discoveries with art materials.
This process-led workshop is an invitation to switch off your inner critic and simply explore. Inspired by nature-based photo collages, we’ll create abstract sketches using lines, textures, colours and shapes, focusing on curiosity and experimentation rather than the final outcome.
After the session, I’ll also share a few ideas for developing your work further, so you can take what you create beyond the workshop if you’d like to.
This session is included in the paid membership, non-members can sign up for a single session - £8. (recording available)
Date and Time: Thursday 12th March, 6pm GMT
Lu.ma sign up: https://luma.com/ryhgcimr
Prep
This will be a relaxed, low-stress session, so there isn’t much to prepare beforehand. However, to help you get the most out of our hour of materials play, I recommend checking the list below. If you’d like a bit more guidance, you might also find this demo video helpful.
Art materials
You can use any materials you like. In the sketches shown in the video I used gouache, acrylic inks, Neocolor II crayons and soft pastels, but you’re very welcome to work with just one or two mediums if you prefer.
Working with a limited selection of materials can actually be helpfu, it simplifies the process and often leaves more headspace for creativity.
You might choose colours inspired by the images, work with your favourite colour palette, or keep things simple by working in black and white. A limited palette can also reduce the number of decisions you need to make while drawing.
For this session, I deliberately chose materials I rarely use. It felt like a good opportunity to experiment with them and perhaps discover new ways they might fit into my future work (and ease the guilt of them gathering dust!).
Paper
In the video I worked in my Pith Oroblanco sketchbook, as its larger size allowed for more expressive mark-making.
If you’d prefer not to work in a sketchbook, you could use loose sheets of paper, scrap paper, or even lining-paper rolls, anything you’re happy to use for messy sketching.
You might work across one large sheet, layering and overlapping sketches from each image, or create several smaller pieces in response to each collage.
Previous workshops and related posts:
I also have another short video where I was experimenting with pastels and mark-making. If you’re planning to work with pastels or drawing materials during this session, you might find it a helpful source of inspiration.
Here are links to previous workshop replays, Creative Flock members can access the full video library:
Images and timings
We’ll begin with one warm-up image, followed by three nature-based photo collages that we’ll work from during the session. Here’s an example of the type of collage we’ll be using.
The collages for this session will be spring-inspired, both in subject and colour palette. You might choose to create three separate panels of mark-making in response to the images, or focus on just one small area within each collage.
The session will begin at 6pm. We’ll do a quick warm up exercise, followed by 45 minutes of drawing from the photo collage. After that there will be an optional opportunity to share your work and chat about the process if you’d like to.
There’s absolutely no pressure to share, you’re very welcome to simply listen or head off if you prefer.
We’ll wrap up by around 7:15pm.
I’ll be sharing my screen during the session so you can clearly see the images we’ll be working from.
This is an example of work I created in the prep video and dueing previous workshops, using photo collages as inspiration and exploring abstract mark-making with a range of art materials:
Sharing work from the session:
I’d love to see what you create so please share on the chat thread for the session or if you’re on Instagram and would like to share there, tag me @emmaillustrates I’ll share to my stories.
Members: out the replay library for all of the drawing session recordings, to watch back at your leisure 🙂
See you at the session!
