In order to start to consider colour more in my work, I decided to do some collages based on a selection of the continuous line drawings I did at my last visit to the farm. This technique worked well during my second year and I felt it couldn’t hurt to move away from painting to allow me to generate more ideas and see what colour combinations work well.
This is the goat collage I did using yellows, oranges, green and a brown painted pattern paper for the fence. I feel that this works really well, both the colours used and how abstract it is. Although I was at first just going to use brown paper for the fence, I’m glad I went with paper that had texture to create a contrast. I feel that the continuous line drawings are perfect for this type of collage as subjects are split up into different segments which makes creating a collage a very simple process.
This is the first chicken collage I did using complementary colours purple and yellow with black for the pen fence. I love the contrast that this collage has and how the white in the patterned purple pieces near the rear of the chicken stands out. I feel that this is an effective yet playful process although it can be tedious cutting out a lot of shapes, depending on how complex the original continuous line drawing is. I feel that this will encourage me to play with colour more which will benefit me a lot.
This is the second chicken collage I did using complementary colours blue and orange for the chicken and a bluish grey colour for the pen fence. Although this collage is still effective, I feel there is less contrast as I have used quite a muted blue for the background but if that had been a more abstract blue, it may have changed that altogether. I tried to incorporate more patterned papers into this collage but I felt that too many patterns can clash too much which is why most of the chicken is done with more solid coloured paper.
I would like to do more collages to experiment with different colour combinations and create some effective colour palettes to use in my paintings as I feel that I was holding back with this last term and should really be playful to determine what works the best for my degree show. I am happy with the progress I am making so far this term and hope to continue this way, onwards and upwards.