A morning of collage

Went to the studio this morning, struggling with an illustration in process and one that is just a thought or an idea in my head right now.

Sometimes the sensible thing to do when I’m stuck is to do something else completely different in order to try and give my brain some space from the problem I’m wrestling with in that moment. Although it’s the sensible option, doing something else feels so counter-intuitive and like I am wasting time rather than continuing to struggle and wrestle with the problem.

Today was such a day. It didn’t start out intentionally though. I made a coffee and sketched out a very quick and rough Welsh dragon that someone wanted me to do. That done, I tidied up and picked out some reference magazines I keep to hand. I think I had in mind to look for reference photos for the idea I had niggling in my head. Somewhere along the line though , any plan I had for an outcome disappeared and I just started working intuitively looking in two magazines at a time for photographs or text that resonated.

I had two mags on the go as I was photocopying spreads rather than cutting or ripping out pages. Not sure why I decided to start this way as not done it before but it does mean I have reference mags I can come back to now again and again.

The other upside of photocopying in black and white is the images become more about the graphic rather than the colour.

Recently I’ve become a little frustrated that my illustrations have been quite representational and I wanted to break this up a little in today’s collage session. I wanted to just make compositions that I liked or experiment with elements coming together.

Working quickly and intuitively allows space for happy accidents. The background female in the above collage was cut off in the photocopying process and wasn’t a composition I wouldn’t have necessarily considered otherwise.

Using smartphone cameras allows us to play with compositions over and above what we start with. The crop here really focusses the attention and forces our eye around the image. Why is she holding her ears ? Who is applying the make up?

Tight crop gives this a passport photo vibe or a photograph clipped to a file as identity. If so, why has she got a file? Who is she? Who is looking at the file?

Taken same image and collaging text. The frame halved - the composition is completely altered. What has LET to do with the photograph. Let who ? Let what? With hands over ears and someone else applying make-up, implication when you add the text is coercion of some kind.

Tigher crop changes the narrative completely - no longer LET but now LE.

This collage kind of came about with the elements that didn’t quite work with the previous image. I started a new page and just kept adding elements and slowly but surely it came together. Interested how working in black and white makes it easier to mix things up. Female head, male arm, cross and chain that could be worn by either. And what of the text? And the hand drawn elements - the blackening around the eyes, the criss cross pattern bottom left ?

Full size photograph of collage experiments. These are not meant to be finished pieces so mixing them up on a single sheet is ok.

Even just a couple of hours after finishing these experiments, the moment by moment thoughts and decisions become blurred and it’s hard to remember clearly. However, I have done my best to give you a glimpse inside 90 mins of what largely felt like intuitive play this morning.

I don’t think there is anything that will necessarily translate directly into a new print, drawing or illustration but it was a reminder that I need to relax and play a little more to avoid becoming too rigid and fixated on the current problem at hand.

There are definitely elements of all of them that I like and I enjoyed playing with type and layout much more than I imagined. The other thing I enjoyed and think is something I will benefit from doing more of is the ability to put things together that wouldn’t normally belong but somehow work. I really enjoy some of the surreal juxtapositions and maybe I’ll research some Surrealists to understand the motivations and main protagonists from that movement.

Image details

All copyright is property of respective owners. Images were photocopied on a Canon MP3650 all in one printer scanner from editions of Cos, Sang Bleu and JPG magazines.