It’s been SOOOOO long since I’ve even touched brushes and old magazines and scissors! So so so very long!! I haven’t made any art for probably 5-6 years. Definitely haven’t made anything since before I moved to where I currently live here in Tokyo, over 5 years ago.
so last winter, I decided that I should get back into what I love. And it feels amazing to be back, being creative again.
Towards the end of 2020, winter break was coming up, so I bought a bunch of art supplies so that I could be ready to start making art while I had a lot bunch of free time on my hands. I challenged myself to try to make a new piece everyday. However, it didn't really work out that way. I think I ended up making 1 new piece every 2-3 days. Additionally, I had to use my own photographs in some way or form in the images that I created.
I've always enjoyed the process of collage, and I figured that that would be the easiest way for me to get back into things.
So I had my "rules" (one new piece everyday, use my own photos, collage), now I just had to start creating!
The first couple of collages were originally 2 different photographs of suburban Tokyo with skyscrapers and buildings, collaged together creating a hybrid city scape. Then I was planning to sketch the landscape as a simple line drawing, however I decided not to do that because I didn't like the idea of spending hours and hours tracing building.... So instead I over simplified the landscape into a line drawing. This gave me more space to play around with composition, layout and colour etc.
At this stage, it's time to play around with found imagery and composition:
First up, the most obvious thing to do was to play around with the buildings. But I still had a lot of white space at the top that I should somehow use. I had a really cool image of snowy Niseko, but didn't know how to I should use it.... So.... I turned it upside down! Sort've like in the movie Inception.
Next, I wanted to flatten the buildings into simple shapes and colours. And added a sunset. I tore the edges of the starry-blue paper to give it a softer edge to try and create some clouds; used crayons to create the sunset. Honestly it was a bit of a struggle to finish this piece and I'm not totally happy with the outcome. But got it done nevertheless.
After the last collage, it was time for me to change it up and do something different. For this one, I originally stuck down the black starry paper for another idea I had. But I changed my mind as soon as I stuck it down! Now I've got a square black piece of paper in the middle of my page which I have to use somehow.
I then found these two floating islands in a gaming magazine and added the blue clouds which were cut out from the first piece above. Behind the top floating island you see the 'reflection' of Tokyo.
Stay tuned for part II
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