Sketching for Collage : Greater than the Sum of it’s Parts
The other day USK Montreal was out for the first of our Montreal Monument sketching meetups. This time out we were at Place du Canada, right next to Marie Reine du Monde cathedral.
I knew we’d have a big turn out. Spring is here! And it seems like every 4th Sunday we get more people. So I planned to be talking to a lot of people and generally not paying too much attention to my drawing. Just making little sketches and having fun. 
I ended up getting about 15 sketches? Something like that. Some of them quite wild. Many done in 5 minutes or less.
These are sketched with dipping pen nibs and either Higgins Sepia or R&K Blue Mare. I was drawing in two ring bound Canson Mixed Media pads. Why two pads? So I could leave one to dry while I drew in the other.
Here’s the final result, combining ten sketches:
I didn’t have a strict plan, but I knew as long as I got enough coverage everything would work out. That’s the beauty of this method. No single sketch matters. Just go crazy and get lots of drawings.
I’ve been recommending this trick for a while – but haven’t actually played with it recently. I think the last time was in the warm-up for my Craftsy.com class Sketching People in Motion, for which I did this big one at the Corning Museum of Glass. It also comes in handy for illustration projects, and courtroom sketching.
To do the collage, you just scan all your individual sketches separately, then assemble them in one large file in Photoshop. Each scan on its own layer, set to the blend mode Darken. That way they’ll overlap whatever is underneath, and you can mess around re-positioning them as many times as you like.
The only thing to watch out for is making that the scanned paper is pure white – so you don’t accumulate a grey haze of paper tone after five layers of Darken.
Sometimes I’ll print the resulting collage back out and paint over top, but this one was just for fun so it’ll stay a drawing.
Let me know if you give this process a try. Send me some pics if you get a good one. Have fun with it :)
~m
Citizen Sketcher 
Loved this post!thanks a lot😊 El 6/5/2016 15:52, “Citizen Sketcher” escribió:
> Marc Taro Holmes posted: “The other day USK Montreal was out for the first > of our Montreal Monument sketching meetups. This time out we were at Place > du Canada, right next to Marie Reine du Monde cathedral. I knew we’d have a > big turn out. Spring is here! And it seems like ever” >
I am glad to see the results; I couldn’t envision it when you showed us several of your sketches on Sunday. I like how you ‘go wild’ I am moving in that direction. Someday I will toss aside my pencils and go right in with pen. So how many of your 15 sketches ended up in this collage?
If I remember right there’s 10 in there. I think what I didn’t use was just some scraggly trees :)
Fascinating – thank you. I’ll certainly give it a try.
What a clever technique…the result is fantastic!
Reblogged this on dave94015 and commented:
some tips on building a collage of sketches
When you say: ‘Sometimes I’ll print the resulting collage back out and paint over top…’ what kind of paper are you printing on? And what kind of printer are you using that accommodates paper you can print/paint on? BTW I join many others of your followers who greatly appreciate your generosity as artist/teacher. I’ve just purchased your new book in both book and Kindle formats and can’t wait to sink my teeth into them. I know they’ll be good already since I’ve purchased your earlier books as well! 😊👏🏻
We have an Epson SureColorP7000 printer, which will print on the same cotton watercolor paper I paint on (Fabriano). I also like Fluid Watercolor papers and if the original doesn’t matter Canson Montval. All work fine for printing line art or even an art print.