2020 #9 Reconstituted Flower with EKD {by Dounia Large}

2020 Topic 9: Collage It

There are so many inspiring ideas in this post. Dounia has some simply stunning ideas for incorporating magazine pages into your art. I also love her idea about when in doubt, add some white dots- I think that's the story of my creative process too!

~ Keren

Hi everyone, it's Dounia with you today, and I'd like to share with you some of my experiments with collaged papers.

I love collage: it was one of the first artistic techniques I practiced with my mom when little, so it brings back a lot of good memories. As I'm also currently separated from my paper stash, I decided to take the opportunity provided by this topic to create my own patterned papers and backgrounds.

Sometimes I find myself low on inspiration or really indecisive on what I want to achieve. I then like to turn toward techniques that focus on the process and motion of craft and required little "artistic" decision making. It gives me a sense of accomplishment without stressing about every little thing. I would like to share a couple of them with you here. They are nothing new or revolutionary but I think they can be fun additions to one's creative palette.

First, magazines are full of big pictures. They can be good or interesting - or not, but they rarely are easily useable as such. However you can chop them up then create a new image simply by rearranging the order of the pieces on a piece of card. The result is a lot more random than the original and can be used as a background without distracting from the main elements.

Regular stripes are the simplest to manage but you can change width or try different shapes for a more random pattern. I find the process of systematically cutting and glue-ing almost meditative and calming. I was in the mood for a striking pattern, and generally contrasted and/colorful images work best for that.

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Here I found the first glued images still too homogeneous and recognisable so I reiterated the process with lengthwise stripes. The colors are now better distributed and I like the tessellated pattern.

To contrast with this very organised background I next went on a tearing spree! I selected parts of magazine pictures with relatively plain colors and tore them in strips and pieces.  That part is pretty therapeutic! These touches of color can be used carefully to create new images, like painting with paper, but I was more into slapping them together to make gradients.

The color variations in the strips provide great texture. I often make too many pieces for one project so I put all the remaining ones in a box to draw blindly and glue. It forces me to release control and the results can be pretty interesting.

To make an actual project, I needed stamps able to stand up to such busy papers. I went for the clear lines and organic shapes of Kim Dellow. The EDK05 set had all I needed for a nature scene:

The leaves doubled as templates for petals cut in my collaged strips. I tried stamping on the front but it covered the color variations too much for my taste.

However I wanted to keep the details on the butterflies so I stamped them directly on pictures with interesting patterns.

Contrasted against the other elements, the leaf one won. I also liked the idea that both the petals and the butterfly were made of leaves!

For the flower centre, the big flower stamp was an obvious choice and the middle somewhat looks like an eye so I ran with that idea. I love collaging eyes, they're so recognisable and always make an impression.

I tried to match both the yellow green of the first butterfly and the eyes with this frog butterfly. The result was a bit plain so I added the vellum layers to isolate the elements and celebrate the graphics of the stamps. The white and black dots also really bring things together. When in doubt, add white dots!

Here is one project finished despite creative block, and I have lots of other backgrounds to play with! I hope this gave you a few ideas to try with magazine pictures. It's very cheap in both materials and tools needed and quite effective! It is also a great way to use those paper scraps we all are hoarding, or can be applied to book pages for very graphic results.

Have fun and stay creative!
Dounia x