Art Retreat with Elizabeth St. Hilaire

I recently had the pleasure of meeting and taking a workshop with Elizabeth St. Hilaire, sponsored by Ooak Artisans Showcase in Syracuse NY. What an awesome weekend with a wonderful group of women!

Honestly, when I signed up for this, I had my doubts about being able to do this collage and keep up with the other students, but my fears were quickly laid to rest. Elizabeth really explains each step and supports us as we work. 

I had homework to do before I left home, and I really felt for my students and the homework I used to assign them!  We had an image of an apple and had to do an underpainting to bring with us. 

My workspace before I started....

I think I packed every DecoArt Fluid Acrylic I had and brought them all to play with! Lots of great colors to choose from.

Here's a sampling of papers I made or altered with the fluid acrylics to use in my collage. I used my gelli plate for a lot of these, and I am loving that tool more and more.

At the end of a long and messy painting day, I just caught the sunset and admired those gorgeous colors!

The "easy" part was collaging the vertical wall design...notice how I got rid of those dots I'd painted!

Then, I started to collage the table and apple's shadow, and began to work on the apple.

Just for comparison...remember my clean work area at the beginning of all this? Well, it was definitely not like that by the end!! I really am a messy artist, and I think it took me a few days before I got all the paint off of me too, lol!

My finished apple collage! I am really proud of how this turned out, especially as I had a lot of self doubt when I began the process. I am thinking I just might frame this one! 

I can see myself making some more papers with my DecoArt Fluid Acrylics and creating more collages, as I really enjoyed this!