Collages and Watercolor

Yeah, so then we were asked by Maggie to bring in 100 magazine landscape photos! Can you imag... Oh. I'm sorry, I didn't notice the new person over there in the corner. Yes, you. Why don't you take a moment to zip back a few posts to see what I'm talking about and then come back and join us... ok, where was I? Oh, yeah...

So, some of us weren't as well prepared as others *cough*. For instance, here's someone (who shall remain nameless), on the train to Stresa, clipping photos from travel brochures she found in the train station.

Ok, ok, so I cheated too! Yes, some of the landscapes I used were scaled down photos from my photo illustration portfolio! There, are you happy now?!? (Editor's note: Please disregard the shameless attempt by the blogger to increase traffic to her photo illustration site.)

Anyway, the Smashing Color goddess, Maggie Maggio, had us do some more color smashing exercises with all these photos. It was pretty cool to take all these landscapes and sort them by color. Obviously, there were more than one type of color in the photographs, but if you try grouping photos with similar color schemes you might be surprised at the results. Out of my 100 photos, I was able to make four or five distinct piles with similar colors with only a couple of photos that didn't fit any of the piles. You should try it some time.

Then were got to play with them by taking a pile we liked and pasting together a collage... Mine is the one with all the purples and (gasp!) pinks in it. That's the lower left corner for all you color blind folks, and for all the dyslexics it's the one with... oh, heck. Never mind.

The last thing we learned from Maggie was how she made her lovely watercolor pieces... not familiar with them? Well, here's Betsy from Etsy sporting one of Maggie's pieces... Doesn't she look good in it? And don't her lovely faux stone and silver earrings look great with it? Don't you think Betsy should have bought that stunning necklace and taken it home with her?

I'm afraid on that last day with Maggie I had a flair up of my fibromyalgia (the bane of my existence) and missed most of the lesson on Maggie's watercolor technique. Luckily, young and healthy Nadja was there with her trusty camera and took a few pictures.

To close, I wanted to share just a few more photos I didn't get to fit into the description of the Stresa workshop.

Here is a sampling of Nadja's fantastic polymer clay mixing skills (mind you, this was her second class with Maggie)... see how wonderfully she has matched her clay to the color chips?

I also wanted to share something very important about polymer clay and color. It's all about the "strength" of the color. One might think that because Zinc Yellow is so bright it would stand up to a color like Alizarin Crimson, but you would be wrong. In order to get what would look like a 50/50 mix of these two colors you would need to actually have almost all yellow to just a pinch of crimson. Check this out...
The last photo is a preview of things to come from Louise Fischer Cozzi. Here is Louise featuring her latest earrings. Aren't they stunning! Brava, Louise!