Thursday, February 9, 2012

My Creative Space

I've been playing around with collage a lot lately, mostly thanks to a great book, New Creative Collage Techniques by Nita Leland. I've tried a few of the projects in my larger sketchbook - take a look:

The first project was collaging with newsprint.
Since I didn't have any newspapers on hand, I cut text out of a magazine, old book pages & a flyer. Print always makes me think of a city, so that's what I did.
After a bit of paint & collage, I finished the piece with some permanent marker.

The next page was completely my idea, spurred by a photo of a mosaic. I decided to make a collage using only "mosaic tiles" - small squares cut from red & turquoise paper.
I love how this turned out!

The next project I tried from Leland's book was a collage based on Matisse's work. I love Matisse - I saw his Jazz series at the Hamilton Art Gallery - the bright colours & bold cut-outs are hard to resist. After a little browsing online, I came across a collage piece from 1944 called Lagoon.
I love this piece! The colours are perfect & it feels mellow & happy to me. So first I tried reproducing this piece as closely as I could without actually copying it:
Click on THIS LINK to compare my collage to Matisse. I tried to keep the colour blocks the same, & free-handed the shapes to make it unique.
I think the black piece is my favourite - it reminds me of fronds of kelp.
This inspired me so much that I had to immediately make another collage based on Lagoon but completely my own:
If possible, I think I love this page even more than the others. I added in a celery green that I think works well & I just feel like it flows nicely.
What do you think?

Head on over here for more Creative Spaces!

2 comments:

Søren said...

Hey, some great work you've there; it's whimsical, colorful and inspired!
Methinks I need to look up that book...

Angie said...

Love love love the collage with newsprint!! I did something simillar when I took an art class for beginners in university (since I was a science student, I was not entitled to take the 'real' art classes - frowns). I wish I had taken a picture of it! I had used gel image transfer techniques with the newsprint to make transparent buildings (to see the wood grain of my support underneath).