Monday, February 14, 2011

My TinyTiny Collage Challenge

It seems I was the only one that did this, so here we go, my collage challenge.

I was surprised to find so many triangular shapes of interest, triangles not being my favorite, but they look like sails, and with the many tents, I may have had masts in mind.  The breast presented a lovely tear-drop shape (turn the photo right side up in your mind) and I am always a sucker for tear-drop or pear shapes.

In the larger square under the breast, do you see an Art Deco-style shape composed to two parts, the left half being in black?  I see these in garment illustration from the period, and the day before I worked on this, I saw a series of lamps and wall lights at Refinery Art Space shop which would look superb in a Frank Lloyd Wright or Mackintosh style house.  (More FLW colors.)

The bottom fur, in this orientation, made me smile.  To me it's a "waffle" shape because of the very Japanized Western treat called "waffles".  When I was growing up, these relatively affordable cakes a pancake-like shell folded with custard or chocolate cream; they were based on Dutch sponge, (because while we closed the country to all foreign countries for 300 years, the Netherlands was the only European country allowed to trade in a small area of Nagasaki, because they posed no thread of Christian missionary activities,) but made into individual servings, because we like it that way.  Here. Googling "waffles" in Japanese, it's a little funny to find many Japanese are still confused; some prefix with Belgian or American to mean the crispier kind, some still insist you make small sandwiches with cream or jam inside, and some are downright Japanese interpretation of Western treats.

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How did I work on this wee Challenge? First I tried to make a collage with my lettuce patch and lettuce leave photos, but I didn't feel motivated and the portions of interest were predictable. Let's face it, I love edges of lettuce leaves, like I've loved the edges of leaves all my life.

So I went to my Sketchbook Project pages, and selected four of the most complicated (i.e. many bits) collages, and one uncomplicated one I like.  I still saw individual pieces and not the collages, (and in some cases entire pages from where the pieces came), so on the computer, I turned all five photos upside down and turned them into black and white photos.  I could still see the bits, so I turned them into negatives of black and whites.  I also turned the original photos on its side (90 degrees clockwise) and turned them into color negatives.

I still saw each piece, rather than each collage as a whole, which I felt was "cheating".  So I enlarged the images, rotated them 90 degrees at a time, and tried to concentrate on the negative space.  I found lots of lovely areas where the original photos were of textiles, and I excluded these; another self-imposed rule.  In the end, the above image was the only one where I found multiple areas of interest.  

Perhaps I should have collaged just color papers instead of photos for this project, or straight-forward photos.  I had just finished my Sketchbook Project when I proposed it, so that would be why I had photographic collage on my mind.  

I did find a couple of humorous images as a results, though.  I discovered I find things hanging upside down funny.
Dog and Hippo - two of my favorite creatures.
Gallery around NZ Parliament hanging upside down; I find it funnier than MPs hanging upside down.

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