A Contemporary Digital Collage of BBC Sherlock

Clues flying at the speed of light - Sherlock brains his way unraveling mysteries!  The excellent cast and production of the BBC Sherlock series have caused me to want to create a collage that has a contemporary feel and looks somewhat like a traditional collage made with paper scraps with some of the images looking cut out.

It is more involved than many of my collages with more images on different layers (see below).

This is a new look for me and a style that I have dreamed about doing, kind of contemporary without a lot of fussy detail which I seem to do without trying! 

Although some would argue this design is not exactly simplistic, I like that I did not have to be exact in cutting some things out (time consuming), with some images having a rough cut look and not much shading except to use the photo editor curves to lighten or darken some images.  One of my first attempts at painting are in this image.  I painted Sherlock's scarf, as small a thing as that can still not look right if you are not careful.  It wasn't as hard to find the right color and paint it as I thought, so little by little I think I will be doing more painting.

The way this image turned out has given me confidence to want to do some shading with the paint brush and maybe color some areas to emphasis an object in another project.  I did have to do some resizing of images which is normal and makes designing in a digital editor a joy.  Objects can be reduced and not enlarged because pixels can become stretched.  Sometimes I do enlarge as long as it is not stretched too much and put a texture over it.

I got the idea to add to this image the Union Jack for some extra punch although I still like the above image for it's simple design.  I kept these images somewhat dark for a mysterious look somewhat like the BBC

 
dark blue toned ad image with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman looking as though they are on a case in the dark of night.

I am currently working on another project, a Downton Abbey image.  It is always a challenge to try to find images that will have the right look and get the overall style I have in my mind.  A lot of the time I get ideas as I am working on a project.  I am trying for somewhat of a period look, it will be interesting to see how it turns out.  I thought I would share it in the unfinished stage so you can see some of my process.

The image has a large white border around it, I'm not sure what I am going to do with the border, I may make an invitation out of the whole image as if inviting the viewer to a garden party or skeet shoot.  I'm still working out the coloration and not finding the colors of the textures easy to erase so I may get rid of the textures and try painting the different colors.

I see myself gradually getting more and more into painting which is a very good thing.   Painting can be less cumbersome than trying to add textures (I often add two and three to get the right color and effect) and sometimes taking some of it off.  Textures have their place though.

Right out of the program editor (see below)!  I used a color photo of the real Downton Abbey, Highclere

 

Castle (see above), which I desaturated (made into a black and white image) and then used threshold to turn it into a black and white line image.  There is also an old photo of a real servant standing beside a color photo of a yellow and black Rolls Royce. Believe it or not when you view the servant at 50% he turns out to be a handsome young man with white powdered hair!

My gallery website:  http://suzanne-powers.artistwebsites.com/featured/sherlock-holmes-ii-suzanne-powers.html

A Former Tax Lawyer, Speech Pathologist Finds Fullfilment In Art

This post is about Carla Parris, who won first place in a collage art contest at Fine Art America using a more traditional method of the collage technique.  I am continuing to write about the art of collage, my last post was on a digitally made (usually involving a layers program editor) collage of Sherlock Holmes, his umbrella, violin, violin bow and overcoat, each on a separate layer in an editing program.

Carla has had one busy life with her career as a former Speech Pathologist and Tax Attorney.   Now apparently retired from her previous jobs, has time to create and find fulfillment in her art.

This is the interesting part, her collage 'Ascending Praise' (as seen above) contains old art as well as new.  She explains it this way, "The original piece I never completed and didn't really particularly like in its initial state; it found new life in this collage, and made me glad I heeded an art teacher's advice to hold onto our "dogs," since you never know what you might eventually be able to do with them.  I still have others yet waiting transformation!"  I say it's always nice to have some backup art, I can relate!

She goes on to explain her "...collage incorporates torn pieces of a watercolor painting, snippets of sheet music, gauze, and gold webbing. The words on the music at the bottom say, 'To the God of glory.'  They, along with the composition which seems to have a floating and ascending movement, inspired the title, 'Ascending Praise'."

"It's heavily textured depth comes from its multiple layers incorporating rich water colors of teal, magenta, and gold with white and cream tones.  It reflects Carla's background in conventional scrap booking, working with textures and layers using the same process, only now using torn strips from the old water color painting.  A piece of sheet music added at the bottom was an afterthought which she says completed it and added yet another layer and additional depth."

The message here seems to be don't throw away your art no matter what it looks like!  I know from experience that has been true about my photography, often I can use an out of focus shot, sharpen it and put layers of textures on it, reviving it.   You can sometimes turn that ugly duckling into a swan.  I'm not the kind of artist that is always trying for the perfect shot, there are endless possibilities in the editing program, thank you!

Here are several before and after examples of some of my snow photos that weren't very sharp or not good coloration but look artful when textures are applied.

Now I don't want you to think textures are an automatic fix.  It can take hours to transform or edit photography to get the right look not including the time to capture the shot.  Some photos don't work at all, depending on the light and composition.  Non traditional art methods can take as much time as traditional methods.

Carla Parris gallery website:  http://fineartamerica.com/featured/ascending-praise-carla-parris.html