drawing inspiration.

i recall wanting to be an art teacher when i was a wee child, until i came to realise that 1. i'm not good at public speaking and 2. i dislike kids. i remember one time in grade 6 when we had those peer support programmes where we all got allocated a kindergarden student to take care of for a week. i got so annoyed that my kid couldn't colour in between the lines. so i did it for them and let them take credit for it. as i got older, i still don't appreciate crappy colouring in. but i wouldn't mind teaching a 'portfolio/presentation' class at TAFE. i love doing projects, but a graphic design job would probably do my head in. so here's my short tutorial on collaging...

you have to remember that not everybody is visual. so as a creative, you must illustrate your ideas in picture form to tell your story or sell your concept. there are 3 main things you need to do this; a concept, time and photoshop. have your concept and focus on the direction you want it to go. familiarise yourself with the programmes you need to aid your project. and set aside time to do this, as you cannot rush perfection. 

i have folders and folders of jpegs that i have collated throughout the years. i spend hours on google and several blog sites picking out images that inspire me and awaken my imagination. start on your own collection as this will be your library for future storyboards. credit where you can. it's good to reference, but i didn't go to uni so i know no better. google image search holds anything and everything you're looking for. be descriptive with your search and you're certain to find the right image for your collage. 

collaging to me is more than cut and pasting pictures onto a canvas. there's almost an art form to it. filter the images you will use by colour, theme and relevance. this will help you with the consistency of your visual presentation.

the first blueprint is my mind map of what i want the interior of the exhibition to look like. if you skip down to the third collage of all the images i used, you can see that i manipulated alot of the objects to scale. i also used the whole frame of some of the images to layer, creating another dimension to the artwork. 
the second collage is the moodboard for my collection, the direction of what i want the models to convey. collaging is all about layers and if you think about it, it's almost like a puzzle. play with the opacity and sizing of the images until it fits. with practice you will know when to overlay or when to erase the background.

and that's how you collage. if you almost feel disturbed by the images, then my work here is done...