Sketchbook Party: Savina Monet, Merel Djamila, and Erika Lamar Buentello

This is the fourth of five posts about Sketchbook Party. If you haven't already, I recommend reading the first, second, and third posts before you read this one. 

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The tenth class during Sketchbook Party was "The Analog Collage Crash Course."  

Savina Monet explained her process for making collages on index cards from magazines and book pages. I've never done collage that small, so I was excited to give it a try. I used the October issue of Diablo Magazine, which was full of all sorts of fun images. Savina encouraged us to find small subjects that we could place in an unexpected setting, so I started tearing out people (and a costumed dog) that caught my eye. As I was looking for settings, I found an article about the 50th anniversary of Heather Farm Park. That's where Steve and I got married, 18 years ago. I set it aside, along with other landscape photos. After I finished making the whimsical dog and the kayaker collages, I made a third (larger) collage of the scenery of the part of California I call home. I added the word HOME and a heart. 

This was one of my very favorite classes. I like each of my collages and I had so much fun making them. I definitely need to do collage more often. 

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The first class on the final day of Sketchbook Party was "Paint Mini Nature Scenes." 

The materials list mentioned paintbrushes, but not what kind of paint to use. I chose my watercolor set, which turned out to be the wrong choice. Despite working as fast as I possibly could, I simply couldn't keep up with Merel Djamila's pre-recorded session. 

As it turns out, that wasn't my fault. She mentioned in the Q&A afterward that she'd taken 3 hours to do the paintings (and dried them between layers) and had edited the footage down to 30 minutes. No wonder I couldn't do in 30 minutes what she'd done in 180 minutes!

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The next class was "Sketchbook Spreads: How to Make Them and Why You Should Create Every Day." 

Erika Lamar Buentello's materials list said we'd be using water-based markers, so that's what I got out. Until I saw the color palette we needed. I made a quick switch to my Prismacolor alcohol markers, which ended up being a good decision. She led us through drawing the casita, then started with some leaves before we ran out of time. 

I enjoyed this class a lot. I wish we'd had more time; she was planning to have us fill both pages with a variety of related images. I also wish I'd seen ahead of time that there was a reference photo. Once again, I hadn't printed it and couldn't bring it up on my iPad without losing the class, so I was drawing blind. Fortunately, Erika did an excellent job describing the skeps and demonstrating each. 

The next class turned out to be another of my favorites and common in the scrapbook world. I'll tell you about that and the last of the classes tomorrow.