Collagraph – Three Amigos – and a list of online video art and craft classes

a collagraph print of three lemons on a plate, painted with watercolor

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Online Art Classes

You’ve probably heard that everything online is moving towards video. You can read articles with statistics on trends, and look at popular social media live-video add-ons like Instagram Stories, Facebook Live video and YouTube Livestreaming video.

Online art & craft classes are sprouting up like dandelions on a golf course, and that’s good news for the visually inclined. You can buy any flavor of boosted artistic intelligence you’d like, and then watch and study the footage at your leisure, in your jammies, with a cup of tea & a cat in your lap.

collagraph-from-matboard
Building the collagraph plate with construction paper and gloss medium varnish

Pick Your Smart

Video course subjects vary from salsa dancing to urban sketching to building a wood, french cleat, power tool storage system, but there are also tons of online art classes available now. How long has it been since you took a class, or committed to a project to make something that required your creative side? #brainaerobics Have you ever taken a video art course?

collagraph-printmaking
Three Amigos collagraph in process

Tips for First Time Online Art Classes

If you’ve never tried a video class, here are some tips:

Schedule Your Time

  • Schedule your time; If you miss art-making, book a reservation with yourself. Block it out on the calendar, and guard that time-slot like a mama bear over her cubs. It’s too easy to shove that creative appointment with yourself into the trunk while getting sucked into the vortex of less fun, chore-related obligations. I promise that reserving 30 minutes twice a week will not cause global calamity. Have courage & commit. 

Gather Your Goods

  • Be ready; gather your supplies in advance, print worksheets or instructions, and be sure to include a notebook and pen to jot down ideas and questions to follow up on while you’re watching the video segments. If the room you’re working in is noisey, have a headset or earbuds ready, and if you can’t leave the area set up between video chapters, put everything in a canvas bag so you can easily access your supplies during your next calendar-date with your class-time.

Power in Numbers

  • Ask a friend to join you; a partner helps keep us accountable. Sometimes we’re better at committing to another person’s expectations than we are to ourselves, so ask a fellow artist to either meet & watch & create together, or if they’re far away, ask if they’re willing to Skype with you at a pre-set time after each session for 20 minutes to go over what you liked, what you learned and what you struggled with.  Confirm what you’ll both accomplish before your next Skype session. Keep each other accountable, but be encouraging.

Dive In Deep

  • If at first you don’t succeed, try & try again; every teacher has a different style. Some instructors are better at showing, while others are better at articulating process with words. You’ll find super fast and messy in their style instructors, while others are slow, neat and deliberate. You might find that one teacher has a great teaching style, but you don’t care for the finished project. You can still apply those methods, or the sequence, materials and ideas to your own work. If you don’t gel with the instruction in your first video class, give the process a chance and take another class with a different company or a new instructor. There are literally thousands of options. It’s your time, so don’t give it up too easily. You’ve got this.
collagraph-printmaking
After a trip through the press, pulling the Three Amigos collagraph print

List of Online Art Class Web Sites

Here’s a clickable list of eleven websites that feature online video classes for the creative hearts in your tribe. And some of them offer gift cards too. 🙂  Share this post with your friends & family if they appreciate hints for gift-giving ideas. ?

Udemy

Schoolism

CreativeLive

Creative Bug

Brit & Co

Skillshare

Curious

Sketch Skool

Lynda

ArtistNetworkTV

I’m certain there are more options for online video art classes, so please add the sites you know about in the comments.

Thanks so much for visiting today, and I’ll see you in the next post!

Happy learning!

Belinda

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Art Quote

The writer [artist] should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention.

Flannery O’Connor

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16 thoughts on “Collagraph – Three Amigos – and a list of online video art and craft classes”

  1. Jeanine Robb

    Hi Belinda,
    As always, I love your work and enjoy your blog! Thank you for the list of video courses. I have taken classes through a couple of them but really enjoyed perusing the other sites. I enjoy your youtube tutorials and would love to take a workshop with you! Are you considering offering workshops ever?
    Thanks so much. Happy holidays!
    Jeanine

    1. Hi Jeanine, Thanks for your compliments. I’m so glad you find the youtube tutorials useful! I’m drafting a series of more in-depth video tutorials now, and I hope to start filming them this winter. I’ll post details here on my blog when they’re ready. And you should know: I totally appreciate your encouragement along the way! Thanks for that!

  2. Hanne Marie Lorenzen

    Hi I love to see your printingtechniques. I work as an artteacher for children in Denmark. I would love to see the process of the Three Amigos to use in my artclasses. Is a video awailable? Hanne Marie Denmark

    1. Hello Hanne Marie,
      I have several video tutorials showing matboard collagraphs on my channel; this one is a line-style mat board collagraph: https://youtu.be/hxPDNyMqwdc and this one is a more painterly, full color version: https://youtu.be/11vefrM-iBs and this one shows inking both single color and multi color: https://youtu.be/c9zB-kiT8HU
      The exact method for the Three AMigos plate building hasnt been filmed yet, but I’m working on one. 🙂 Thanks for your visit and good luck with your students!

    2. Hanne Marie Lorenzen

      Hi again
      I have been very unfortunate with applying watercolor to a dry block-print. It washed completly out . . What watersolutable Brand(s) will stay permanent when print has dryed completly?? What Brand can you recommend to solve this problem?? Thanks for the previous answer.

      1. Hi Hanne, That sounds like a paper issue – what paper is your school stocking for you to print on? In order for the paper to take watercolor, there should be some sizing (starch) in the paper to suspend the pigments. If you used porous papers, like sketch paper, kozo or Arches88, the watercolor pigments will sink into the pulp, sometimes staining all the way to the back of the paper. I recommend Arches cover, or if you can’t find that, try Rives BFK paper for watercolor on a print. If you’re printing the relief prints on a press, you can even try printing on 140 lb smooth watercolor paper. If your watercolor paper has a bit of texture, spritz it with water and blot before printing. Come back and let us know your results!

  3. Hi, Belinda,

    Love that collagraph! Wondering, how thick is the construction paper? And is the grey background mat board?

    Last year I took a six-week on-line sketching class with Jane LaFazio. She was a great instructor, so generous with her comments and suggestions. Everyone’s favourite assignment was sketching our shoes! Such fun to see what other people were wearing!

    Recently I took a Craftsy course on colour mixing : https://www.craftsy.com/painting/classes/acrylic-color-mixing-made-easy/37456

    It was for acrylics but the information was equally helpful with the Akua printing inks I use.

    If you live in a rural area like I do, on-line classes and videos are a great way to learn.

    Cheers, Louise

    1. Hi Louise! The construction paper for Three AMigos was standard kid-grade school supply paper I purchased in a packet at an office supply store. The matboard base was white (I use the back of the mat board), but I layered gray paper so I could score it with a knife for the tile lines.
      I love Jane Lafazio’s layered fabric appliques with embroidery thread! You must have had a blast in her sketching course! And I think *everyone* should take a color mixing class, so hats off to you! I clink my tea cup to yours to celebrate the lovely option of online video classes! Thanks for the visit!

      1. I had no idea you could build a collagraph plate with something as thin as construction paper. Such possibilities! Thank you!

  4. Hi Giselle, Yes, in person is always better, and if there are too many miles, or the timing doesn’t sync, I sure do love a good video tutorial! And you’re so right – watching them after a live class is a perfect reminder of all the minutia we forget with time. Happy painting to you!

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