Join as Chloe DiVita, All Pet Voices Co-Founder, and Sam Price, Artist and Owner of My Dog Collage, talk about getting creative inspired by your pets. Collage is art and easy for all to do. Your dog or cat or bunny or guinea pig – any pet! – can inspire that creativity.
This video is part of the Pet Voices LIVE series. CLICK HERE to see the full schedule of videos.
INTRODUCTION
Chloe DiVita, All Pet Voices Co-Founder – 0:02
Hello everybody and welcome to Pet Voices LIVE. We’re going to get creative today. If you think you have no creativity, I promise that you do and that we’re going to make it simple. These are things that are going to be around your house and we have Sam Price here with us today, which I’m excited about. Because I admire all of his work, but you can see there in the background here. He is an artist who creates beautiful handmade collage art and he uses paper magazine squares, so magazines laying around your house. He’s been doing it for over 25 years and he teaches it too. So, since the whole we’re all stuck at home and COVID, he has been teaching some virtual classes. So we’re going to introduce what those are to you coming here soon.
But Sam, I’m just excited to have you here and to learn this because I feel like it’s something that maybe I actually could do. So tell us more. Just kind of let’s start at the beginning. Let’s start at… 25 years is a long time. You don’t even look old enough to be doing that for 25 years.
Sam Price, Artist and Founder of My Dog Collage – 0:58
Thank you, Chloe. Thanks for having me. I have been doing this for 25 years. I’m a self taught artist and I’m just gonna be turning 40 here, but I’ve been doing this my whole life and fell into collage as a way of being able to quickly express myself. I was a sketch artist and a doodler. And I moved into collages to create new compositions. And because it’s such an easy thing to come by, it’s really fun. And I really have taken it to the next level. And along the way started receiving some dog commissions and that really was the introduction to a word of mouth side business that I was doing and the rest is history, but it’s really fun. And I really love teaching collage. And I think people can, can jump into a creative project and I’m here to kind of teach them how to do that.
Chloe DiVita, All Pet Voices Co-Founder – 1:56
I love it and I love that you just sort of fell into it. I feel like sometimes life leads us in places that we just are supposed to end up and it seems like you are very much where you should be.
Sam Price, Artist and Founder of My Dog Collage – 2:09
It’s a long journey. Just like a business or anything. You think it’s a straight line, but it’s a long curvy thing and I never necessarily considered myself to be a teacher until I had kids of my own, and you start kind of taking on that role naturally. And of course, as a professional artist, there’s a lot of art supplies in the house. So kids are learning with you, and they’re doing projects with you, and all of a sudden you’re in the teaching mode too. But while we’re all at home, it’s a great kind of way to change gears and get off the social media and some of the new stuff and just be a little more productive with your minds.
Chloe DiVita, All Pet Voices Co-Founder – 2:50
And that’s what I really love about what you’re gonna show us here in just a moment because we all have magazines. I don’t know why but I have a lot of Fortune magazines laying around apparently. I subscribed years ago. This is from 2014 when “How Whole Foods is Taking Over.”
Sam Price, Artist and Founder of My Dog Collage – 3:07
I have people come by and drop off their lifelong Elle Decor subscription list or National Geographics is my other favorite.
Chloe DiVita, All Pet Voices Co-Founder – 3:16
Oh, nice. I feel bad cutting them up.
I realized when we were getting ready for this, I was like, “Oh, I know I’ve got magazines, I’m gonna go find some.” And I found others and I realized I have nostalgia with some of the magazines I have. I’m like, “I can’t cut it.”
Sam Price, Artist and Founder of My Dog Collage – 3:33
One of my first hacks to staying focus is to actually turn the magazine upside down. So you stop reading the headlines and you’re a little bit more focused on the colors. And it’s my first little tip to get yourself into looking for colors mode instead of “Oh, that’s a good recipe.”
Chloe DiVita, All Pet Voices Co-Founder – 3:54
Yes. Because that’s me. I’m easily distracted.
Well, one of these days I want to make that Greyhound behind you because it’s National Greyhound Month and I have a greyhound. I love greyhounds. I love all animals. I’m wearing my Tiger shirt today.
Sam Price, Artist and Founder of My Dog Collage – 4:07
My very, very close friend. I actually have to give her a shout out today if you don’t mind. Her name is Liana and she is a big proponent of the Greyhound rescue. This is Astro and Astro was very near and dear to her and just passed away recently. And I did this portrait for her and she’s one of my first commission portraits almost 25 years ago. She was one of the first people who commissioned me. And she just commissioned me for a second portrait. And we’ve known each other a long time.
And so that’s kind of how it works. And that’s how I am. That’s how I started. My business is kind of like you work one on one with somebody and your animals are very special to all of us, of course, and making that connection, I feel as the artists, I’m this third wheel and I kind of come in there and I am this mirror to kind of just reflect this really important relationship. And I try my best to kind of use the photos that people send me to connect with the emotion that they feel with each other. It’s a really powerful thing as an artist, you’re stepping into this very deep connection and I love it and it continues to be this very fulfilling thing, as a career and as a teacher, too.
HOW TO GET STARTED
Chloe DiVita, All Pet Voices Co-Founder – 5:21
I love it. That’s fabulous. All right. Well, without further ado, let’s get started.
So first of all, what do we need?
Sam Price, Artist and Founder of My Dog Collage – 5:27
I want to make it simple for you guys. I want to just really emphasize that everybody can do this and I know that some people feel like “Oh, I’m not a very creative person.” And I just want to dispel that myth and I want to bring you in anywhere you are simple tools today guys. We got some scissors and I got my kids Crayola crayon marker. We don’t need a big, fancy anything. I have just some Elmer’s glue today. I also have some fancy glue. If you have tape. Whatever you got, this is kind of the day to kind of make this project just a real simple project.
And I use a little bit of a grid drawing. We’re going to use a piece of paper today. And I’m going to draw an eye. And whether it’s a human eye or a dog, it’s kind of up to you. I’m going to draw a little bit of a doggy eye and then I’m going to draw this four point grid, kind of a North/East/West/South grid around this eye and that’s going to give us the framework for building our collage.
Okay. So again, I’m going to do three circles in a row guys. So I’m going to draw a tiny circle. I’m going to draw a medium circle around that circle. And then I’m going to draw a circle that goes right around the large circle. So three circles. One, two, three.
Chloe DiVita, All Pet Voices Co-Founder – 6:45
Is that your eye? That’s going to become your eye, right?
Sam Price, Artist and Founder of My Dog Collage – 6:49
It’s going to be the glint in the eye. This is the pupil and this is the iris. Okay?
From that point we’re going to draw almost like an almond shape around your circle. So an almond. It doesn’t matter if it’s right next to the circle or not. I’m going to just draw an almond, right around that, if you can see that. And then I draw a second almond right around that almond. Okay. And really simply, I have this pretty almost Egyptian like, kind of sphinx-like eye.
And what I’m going to do is I’m going to draw… I’m going to use right in the center of my eyeball there. I’m going to use that as the center point, and I’m going to draw an X right in the middle of my eyeball, almost like a target. And then I’m going to draw a square around this whole thing, just a big, it doesn’t matter if it’s a rectangle or a square. But what I want to do is just block that whole thing out like it’s a big rectangle inside your actual square itself.
Chloe DiVita, All Pet Voices Co-Founder – 8:05
I feel like this is our schematic. Is this our schematic?
FINDING PIECES AND COLOR
Sam Price, Artist and Founder of My Dog Collage – 8:09
Yup, that is exactly right. So this is a very, very simple way that I build something as complex as one of these guys. I use a grid and I use a photograph. And I use this kind of griding system to build these magazine collages. And underneath the magazines that you see here is essentially what you’re seeing here, what we just made, this griding system. And it’s just a framework that keeps us, like you said, a schematic framework to keep us in line.
I’m gonna simply go in here almost like this was a coloring book now, and I’m gonna fill in these different squares. Knowing that this is an eye, we can obviously kind of take some liberty with what we choose to fill in these colors. This would be a white little glint, and it’s kind of like the window to the eye. And most of our dog pictures that we have in our phones have that one shot with a dot eyes looking and it’s the glint in the eye. They’re really really captivates and kind of humanizes the eyeball, so I keep this little thing in there. It’s important.
And then surrounding this area here, will be these darker areas, which is your pupil. I would do in some different colors. This is the cornea of your eyes. So you could do this all in white. And this obviously we could fill it with collage square. And so I like to jump into this part really quick, guys. I hope you’re following along with me.
Chloe DiVita, All Pet Voices Co-Founder – 9:43
Yes. Let me ask you this. How big of pieces are we talking?
Sam Price, Artist and Founder of My Dog Collage – 9:50
Yes, I will illustrate. I am working on a pretty large scale and some of the pictures may be a bit smaller than mine. As you can see here, this is probably a pretty large piece. I like to work on a smaller level. I like to almost have like, they say thumbnails, and this is like a postage stamp. We’re gonna say postage stamp stuff. And I like that because there’s a lot of variation that you can… Almost like a jigsaw puzzle kind of effect. And I will cut these. I’m gonna use this lighter skin tone for the outside portion of my eye and what I’m going to do is I’m gonna use these strips that I find. I’m going to break them down, like Chloe said, to these stamp size squares.
Find out more tips on magazine collage art by watching the full video above!
For more information on magazine collage art and mydogcollage.com:
Website + Online Classes – www.mydogcollage.com
Instagram – @samuelsprice
Twitter – @mydogcollage
Free Collage Class for Kids – https://www.paacf.org/collage-with-sam-price.html
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