My creative process doesn’t usually go in a straight line. I stop and start and stop again. I’ve told you before that I call myself a seasonal journaler, because I write for a season, short or long, and then I stop. I express myself through several creative disciplines and admire others that I have no skill for. To honor our creative journeys, past, present and future I’m including an article about creating a small collage. I believe that collages are an excellent way to describe a journey of whatever kind. Please read the article and feel free to practice making one or several collages this week.

Have a creative week!

How to Create A Ten Minute Collage
By

Lael Johnson

This is an exercise designed to quickly wake up your creative skills and help you create a basic or starter collage.
Why would you want to create a basic collage?
(1) To create a collage quickly.
(2) To prepare a starter collage for a future work session.
(3) To use your creative skills quickly.
(4) To create a piece when it is hard to sit still.
(5) To focus and finish a piece quickly.
(6) To create a piece under some time pressure.
(7) To create a piece spontaneously.
(8) To overcome an instant creative challenge.

I know that there are some people who would disagree with the idea of creating a collage quickly. They don’t understand the principle behind creating a collage quickly. Think of quick work on a collage as similar to a timed free writing session. You write non-stop for ten minutes. Then you reread your work usually discovering at least find at least one phrase or sentence that you can use for starter sentence for your next piece. I am applying the same principle to creating a starter collage.

When I work on my collages, I don’t always want or need to work for a long session. In fact, I often work in short sessions, focusing my work on only a small section of one page. Some of my pages are still not finished. I like flexibility and variety in my collage sessions. I don’t want to have to work on a piece, when I feel finished with that piece. When I work in my collage notebook, I work for different lengths of time. Sometimes I find that if I work too long, I become grumpy and don’t enjoy the latter part of my session. I begin to feel obligated to finish the piece, rather than leave it for a later session. However, if I work on different sections for shorter time periods, introducing some variety, then I finish my work feeling more relaxed. I also have an overuse issue with both of my hands, so working in shorter sessions keeps my hands from becoming too sore by the end of a session.

Most of you probably know how to create a collage over a longer period of time, such as fifteen minutes or longer. This exercise will teach you how to create a basic collage in ten minutes. It’s fast, focused and fun. Please remember that this exercise isn’t a replacement for creating a longer collage. It is just a quicker way to start a collage. After you create a ten minute short collage, you can always return to your basic collage, working more thoroughly and slowly to develop a more complex piece.

In order to finish in ten minutes, remember to complete each step in five two- minute segments. Are you ready? Start.

FIRST TWO-MINUTE SEGMENT: (1-2)
Place two to ten pictures on one piece of paper.
SECOND TWO-MINUTE SEGMENT: (3-4
Shuffle the pictures around until you create one theme.

THIRD TWO-MINUTE SEGMENT: (5-6)
Glue everything on the piece of paper. When in doubt, glue anything that moves. (There is no need to be neat here. Gluing pictures to paper is often very messy.)

FOURTH TWO-MINUTE SEGMENT: (7-8)
After the glue has dried, turn the page over. Write one negative observation and one positive observation about your collage.

FIFTH TWO-MINUTE SEGMENT: (9-10)
Remember to record the starting and ending date and time on the back of your collage. You may also want to record the location. Finally, share your collage with another person if you feel so inclined.
Congratulations to those of you who finished your starter collages. But, what if you don’t finish your piece in ten minutes? Don’t worry about it. Just use what you have as a starter for a basic collage or schedule another ten-minute work session to finish the piece. You can also store it in your files and work on it in the future. If you really don’t like your piece, just cut it up and use it in another collage. Collages are a great place to practice recycling art materials. What I really want you to remember is that you can create a collage quickly. You are not limited to creating collages in long creative sessions. It’s good to push yourself to create at a quickly at least once in a while. than you are used to doing. If you like it, then you can continue using it as a warm-up exercise. However, if you prefer to create at a more leisurely pace, then file the exercise away for use in the future. I would suggest working through this exercise twice a year. It’s a simple, yet effective creative exercise. Have fun creating your ten minute collages.

 

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