In my last collage from part II, I started adding more detail in each layer by hand and I wanted to continue that trend beyond simple line drawings of leaves and shrubs.
This piece is from the peak of Mt. Takao, which is very close to central Tokyo. I went hiking on New Year Day 2021, which has kind’ve become a tradition of mine the last few years - to go hiking on NYD. It was a cold, crisp but a super clear and sunny day and I was able to see Mt. Fuji from the top. I'll add both the 'before and after' pictures below.
After figuring out what colours I wanted each layer to be and how they interacted with each other, I decided that I liked how the foreground was as it is - it had a strong black figure standing with its shadow stretching across the yellow backdrop.
In Japanese it says “やがて全てがクロスする” or in English roughly translates as “everything eventually crosses paths”, which I thought was quite appropriate considering that my main themes of culture and identity are converging here on paper. Would love to hear how you interpret this down in the comments :)
However, this piece was actually pretty tough to make because of the complexity of the branches and leaves that I had to cut out in the first layer.
As you can see, the branches are very delicate and difficult to handle, but the real problem was with the shapes between the branches that I cut out to allow us to see through to the background, to the second and third layers, specifically.
This means that, firstly, I need to think of how I’m actually gonna put everything together: I’ll need to work backwards by gluing down the last layer first. For example, I painted the sky first, then I stuck down Mt. Fuji in the background and worked my way through the rest of the layers to the foreground, which was last to be glued down.
Secondly, I cut out certain sections of the second layer, on the right side, into
different parts and then later glued them down. Like a jig-saw puzzle. Unfortunately, this creates more opportunities for mistakes to happen, and is very time consuming. For example, some parts didn’t fit properly, one small piece I accidentally glued down upside down! Etc etc etc. But on the left side I made the second layer slightly larger than the foreground, so when I glued down the foreground on top of the second layer, it would be seamless. And way less work too!
Once all of that was completed, it was time to add more detail in the mountains! Using pencil, pen and crayons I added the dips, crevices and textures that the mountains naturally have.
As always, thanks for reading! I hope you had fun.
Stay tuned for more.
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