The next two pieces are both from Okutama, on a trail called Mukashi Michi. They're both from the same mountain range, but just different perspectives.
The first collage is basically the same style as my previous collages, and the second collage is a very different style of collage. I'll get in to more detail about that later.
Above are the original photographs I took and underneath is the collage I made of each of the photos.
The first collage, on the left side, as I mentioned above has been done in basically the same method I've done my previous collages. So I won't go in to too much detail of how I've created this piece as I'll just be repeating myself, and that's kinda boring! If your not familiar how I create my collages, check out my previous blogs here or at the bottom of the page will have some of my recommended blogs to read too.
However, here is really cool time-lapse of me painting the sky below. Enjoy!
Despite how fun and rewarding this and the last series of collages were, I think by the time I finished this piece, I realised that this technique that I'm using isn't challenging me anymore. I was already thinking of how I could do something more exciting and challenging, so it was time to move on and do something different and start learning from my mistakes again.
The next collage was partially inspired by
another artist called Jay Kelly; who creates HUGE, intricate collages using small cut-out pieces of paper.
I really like how Jay is able to add details and depth to the image, while at the same time it still has that 'collage' feel. See right. So I tried to emulate that in my next piece, but on much smaller scale.
And also, the background is just really awesome!
As usual with my collages, I start off with the original image that I photograph. From there, I loosely plan the order of how I'm gonna layer everything.
Firstly, I started with painting the sky. In the original, I could see a tiny little bit of blue sky peeking out from behind the clouds. So I painted a little bit of light blue first, then over the top I painted the dark, moody clouds grey and black.
Next, I cut out the mountains as one large shape and stuck it down. The reason I did this was that I thought it would add more texture and depth later on in the collage as I would gradually build up the layers of paper on top of each other. In hindsight, I realised that this step was actually totally unnecessary because the vast majority of this large cut-out would be covered over anyway. I just created extra work for myself that wasn't needed.
For the colours, I decided I wanted to use mainly greens and blues. For the majority of the image I had planned to collage in the Jay Kelly style. But for certain areas (which you can see above) I decided to layer paper on top of each other, almost like a topographical map. As I pasted a layer down, I would make the next layer a different colour and slightly smaller. I did this because I didn't want the entire image to have the same texture. I thought that different mountain peaks and valleys might be difficult to tell apart if everything had the same type of collage style. So to be better able to tell the difference visually, I thought it would be necessary to use a different collage style, colours and also the direction of the paper.
Then, it was time to do the main body of collaging. This would by far, take the most amount of my time! I've never attempted this type of collage before, so it was a very large learning curb of trial and error. The main issue for me, was should I start from the top and work my way down (lightest to darkest colour) or should I start from the bottom and work my way to the top (dark to light)? Or some sort of combination?
So I experimented in different areas: going from top to bottom, bottom to top, light to dark, dark to light etc etc.
Below is an example of a small area that I collaged using small cut-out pieces of paper. I started at the top in a light blue colour and moved way way down to a darker shade of blue.
As you can probably imagine, this small area alone took quite a long time finish. So imagine doing the rest of the image in a similar style!
At some point during this process, I decided against doing the entire image in this style. It was simply taking too long and I was getting frustrated about that. So I did the same collage style I did on the top left, and did it on the right side. The almost-topographical style.
Lastly, I cut out one simple, flat layer as the foreground.
I like how different areas and layers seemingly float in and out of each other; some areas are connected and others are disconnected. I think the different types of textures helped to identify other areas more clearly, but I also like how open to interpretation it is. Other people will perceive it differently. Which I think art should be about, how it makes you feel.
If you're comfortable sharing, I'd love to hear how this makes you feel in the comments below or on Instagram (remember to follow too).
I decided against adding more detail over the top as I would have normally done in my previous collages because there was already more than enough information on the surface. I didn't want to over-saturate or over-work the image. I think the paper texture and colours are more than enough information.
As always, thank you so much for reading! If you enjoyed reading this, please consider sharing it on Facebook, or anywhere cool that you share things :)
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