College Collage

December 1st, 2011. Paper Collage.

 For the last week before my ARTS 532 Introductory Drawing final, the class was assigned to do a still life of a stage using different shades of paper. It was a two day project starting from December 1st and ending on December 6th.

The first half of the first day of class I prepared the paper for the collage. Using ink-wash, I made a variety of shades on newsprint. Plain newsprint was the lightest light. Unfortunately, my darkest dark was not very dark, and all the ink-washed papers turned out lighter than I thought they would be. They all looked pretty similar in color.

The second half of the first day, I spent my time making a construction drawing of the stage and various items.  At first, I tried being very specific and precise with my lines and used skewers and pencils to make measurements. It looked horrible. I turned the large paper over and started over, and just used my eye for judgement.

The second day I started work on  and finished the collage. We were not aloud to use scissors, so every piece was torn and carefully placed.   I tried to work in layers to make the collage easier, starting from the background then by the farthest object, next farthest, etc. Altogether, the collage took every hour of the class to make it-- a total of six hours.

The collage came out much better than I thought it would. It has a surprising amount of depth despite its few shades of value. The instructor thought it was my best still life to that day.

(c) Maranda L. Scott