Individual: The Collage

For one of my classes (the same one I created the Dalekooper for) we have to create a collage, and for a while I couldn't come up with any ideas (again, like the Dalekooper). The only thing I knew I wanted to do was incorporate an orange coloured sky as the background. Until yesterday.

I was sitting in a lecture for the very class this is for, looking (in a pretty intimidated manner) at previous student work and wondering just how I was going to produce something in time for next week's due date. So I grabbed a pen and scribbled a little thumbnail of an imagined orange sunset with a city skyline below it. I've always had a thing for long, exaggerated skylines. Probably something to do with spending too many hours playing Sonic games as a child while being enchanted with the backgrounds. Anyway, as I sat there looking at my sunset and the Sonic-ish skyline I knew my idea had progressed, even if only a little. I now knew that I wanted to have an orange sunset and a city.

I also knew these two things together didn't necessarily make a very interesting picture. To me it might, certainly, but not, say, the teacher.

So my mind went to work once more and this time it arrived at mountains. Mountains beyond the city. Mountains in their orange coloured glory that would capture my imagination just like those in the Sonic games, or those in the background of the credits in that one Pokemon game (probably Sapphire and, presumably, Ruby).

But I needed more. It needed a point really. Something big in the center that was interesting and could support and encourage the use of the city and the mountains and the clouds in the background (because I was going to use them damnit). This could've been anything really, but since I was determined to use my own images exclusively in the collage it narrowed the possibilities down significantly.

My mind turned, as always, to photos of my cat but it just as quickly turned away, and contemplated other, more creative options. And so I realised that a picture of the little black birds that live in my garden back home (of which I have several pictures on here, including the one I would come to use) would be appropriate. I could have them overlooking my beloved cityscape/mountain range/sunset.

And so, to cut the ending of a long story short (or shortish), after a few tests with different images, the sacrifice of my treasured mountains (partly because I found they weren’t necessary, and largely because I don’t have pictures of any) and the use of a few textures, brushes and some text, I came to this.