Collage: Art Finds A Way

Most of the time, August's daily collages were creative exercises for me - creative expression rather than emotional. There were two exceptions, though, and they are two of my favorite pieces of the collection.

She Is Her Own Shelter

I created She Is Her Own Shelter after our dinner out that night at our favorite sushi restaurant was nearly spoiled by another customer: a man of a certain age who came in with his family and was loudly self-entitled and complaining the entire time we were there. Seriously, we could hear him from the other end of the sushi bar, he was creating such a disruption. There are a lot of men like that in my family. I have a hard time being around someone like that – I was going to say "in public", but really "anywhere" would be closer to the truth – so instead of being able to enjoy our meal, I felt tense, watchful, and ready to fight or flee.

A Collage A Day In August

Daily Collage #30 - Her Majesty

For August, I set myself a creative challenge: create thirty-one collages in thirty-one days, with the intent to flex my creative muscles, share my work with the world, and build a new body of work.

Here are some of the things I learned over the course of the project:

• Showing up to the page (virtual or otherwise) every day, whether I want to or otherwise, is powerful. Necessity really is the mother. 
• There are images that I like to use again and again, like vintage photographs, stars, the moon, the sky, wings, flowers, leafs, trees, ravens and other birds, cats. Finding new ways to use them is wonderful.

Prints (and some other fun things) are available in my Society6 shop.

Here's my basic process, more or less, when creating a collage:

Almost Fall...

Collage Project, Twenty Days In

A selection of my digital collages

Ten days left in my collage a day project. I really hit my stride a few days in, and it's been all learning, fun, and experimentation ever since. I'll share my thoughts about the process and what I've learned from it at the end of the month.

See all the collages here.

Some are available as prints and other fun things in my Society6 shop.

Here Be Monsters

Monsters and the edge of the map

My August collage a day project is going really well. There's something about committing to daily creative output that not only just plain feels good, but I can see that I'm rapidly building a new body of work, and that is exciting.

This is the latest. I may do nothing else for the next few days but put vintage Victorian illustrations together with various cephalopod bodies, it's so much fun! Here Be Monsters is available in my Society6 shop. All the collages are posted on my Tumblr.