I have given myself a challenge to create a collage every weekday in the summer months of July and August! I’ve never collaged anything in my life, this is a totally different medium for me, and I had great fun with the first week.
The collages I have created and plan to create all have something to do with me – my childhood, my interests. They are all nature themed (except for one, because I wasn’t thinking when I found the reference photo…!)
Below are my first five collages!
Day 1: Flowers in a field
The inspiration for this was from a lovely photo taken in the countryside around where I live. The wildflowers are all out at the moment and it’s wonderful.
Day 2: Monstera
I love Monstera plants, I think they’re so cool. I really liked making this collage, though I think my colour contrast needs work. This was inspired by some huge monstera leaves I saw in the botanical gardens of Lednice in the Czech Republic.
Day 3: Lanterns…
This was the anomalous, non-nature themed reference I had for myself! I have no idea how it escaped me that this was the odd one out, but there you go… I had a go anyway.
For anyone who doesn’t know, there is a festival in Chiang Mai called ‘Yi Peng Lantern Festival’. It happens every year, and several years ago I was there and had snapped a very blurry photo with my very old smart phone, which became the reference image for this piece.
To be honest, I’m not so happy with this one. However, I really liked the process of making it – of creating the difference shapes compared to the previous two collages. I have been enjoying the hands-on nature of collaging a lot. This collage was definitely a learning experience. This festival is such a beautiful experience, and I hope I can do it justice in a future art piece…!
Day 4: Racket-tailed Drongo
There are going to be a lot of birds in my summer collage journey…! Birds were a big part of my life growing up in the tropics, and because of the abundance of nature in the tropics, it’s only natural that it has affected my art.
This racket tailed drongo, which I have drawn before in the style of line drawings, is a wonderful bird I used to see frequently in Singapore and Malaysia. It’ll never cease to amaze me how many shapes, colours and sizes of flora and fauna exist in the tropics.
This was my first bird collage, and while I think there’s drastic room for improvement, I really did have great fun creating the different shapes for it!
Day 5: Dirt path in Spain
This is inspired by a coastal path in Spain, where I was in May – not that you would know it! It was a lovely dirt path that went along the coast with greenery and rock faces on either side.
My collage version is a very big over-simplification of the reference image, and I felt very out of my depth throughout this one. I’m so glad I gave it a try – there’s still so much to learn for collage.
