I made my first collage today from failed painting experiments!
I have a stack of underwhelming pantings and color experiments that I've been meaning to do...something...with for a while. The stack keeps growing and I kept putting off trying anything with them, which was silly because they weren't doing me any good like that, so I might as well try something creative and different with them, right? Well another local artist I follow on Instagram made some cool collage cards from old paintings today, and I decided surely I could start with something small like that.
So I went to my art room after dinner and started going through my pile. I have had a general idea in my head I'd probably start with something like a landscape. I happened to find three 4x6 pages of color experiments back to back that all used Daniel Smith Lunar Blue. This seemed like a good sign--a unifying color in all three. I tilted them this way and that, tried to decide which parts were the most interesting and colorful.
Did you do that assignment in art class as well, where you tear up construction paper to make the layers in a landscape? I kept thinking about that, so I took a deep breath and started tearing one of the pieces. It was so scary to tear up that paper--that's a totally permanent decision after all! I tore up the next one too. Then I grabbed a glue stick from when I was still doing scrapbooking (seems like a lifetime ago) and made my layers permanent.
I was a bit worried that it was too busy, but response from friends has been very positive! And while that's good and reassuring, the more important part is that I challenged myself to do something scary, outside of my artistic comfort zone, and I went through with it. It was energizing and uplifting to tackle the unknown and take a risk, and I wanted to write this down for myself as a reminder: I'm proud of me today.
