Exercise 7: Composing Pictures

Create the following ‘pool’ of images from coloured paper

and your own drawings, designs or photographs.

● A group of coloured shapes, like a yellow circle, green triangle, black

square etc.

● Images of 5-10 figures; these could be ordinary people, superheroes,

characters from history or celebrities, depending on the sort of images

you want to create.

● A group of 5-10 background landscapes, for example a city street, country

road, mountain-scape, famous landmarks or the surface of the moon.

● A group of other random visual elements like objects (a bus, a building,

dinner table, a bunch of flowers, etc).

People:

I wanted to get a variety of different poses and different types of people. I wanted their activities to be random when sat beside each other so that when creating a little collaged scene it would be a bit weird. To find these images I search "people" on Pinterest and then clicked through each time there was recommendation based on an image.

Location:

I kept this simple and picked out some street locations. I didn't really want to spend too much time on this so kept I roughly sketched some places I thought could be nice to work with.

Working with just the above set of drawings the I created these two pieces on Photoshop:

If spending more time on this exercise I would look to bring in some random locations, such as mountain views. The set of people I had drawn would not really make sense in mountains for example which I think would be part of the fun. I would also then explore more fantasy worlds, or bring space elements in such as planets and galaxies.

I definitely played it safe with the backgrounds, and if really diving deeper on how to improve this, I would look to bring colour and other textures. That said, I'm pretty satisfied with the result, if anything it was a nice "sketchbook" session doodling people where I hadn't gotten too caught up in the details. I enjoyed sketching the poses, the clothing and keeping faces simple in style.

Do I see myself reaching for this technique from my arsenal of other techniques? Yes and no, I suppose? I find myself playing safe with it, not really allowing myself to push the boundaries. If I gave myself time to try this outside of deadlines, then maybe I could have fun with it. I do like the idea of collage and combining the random with obscure, from different backgrounds and themes to unrealistic scales. With this in mind, a quick example from the above drawings could be like this:

Once I stuck the man in the rocket, I obviously had the space theme in mind. starting with a background I went on the hunt for a space photo that seemed appropriate. The perfect image from the moon looking at earth gave me the right view and ground surface for the drawing to fit on. Once this was in place, I then wanted the random element that didn't fit the theme but kind of looked cool. I first went for a vending machine, the a plant... and those just didn't fit even with them being random. So I then thought of a cow. Whilst i felt this could be random, it actually made sense. Cows are often blamed for their methane contributions so I found this to be the perfect element to sit beside the rocket and satellite. I had fly me to the moon in mind, which looking at the guys disappointed face, it seemed to have had a sarcastic tone to it. Then for some strange reason, perhaps because the guy is sitting in a kids arcade rocket, I had the urge to add whatever you do don't jump the queue. With all the pieces together I wanted to add some very rough scribbles to just finish it off.

With this image now flattened, I decided to do some effects on Photoshop. I gathered I had taken it this far out of my comfort zone I should now just see what I can do using filters from Photoshop that I would never think to use.

In the end... I actually really like the final image. Using the photocopy effect and a vertical grain, I some how came out with the above. My sketch alongside the cut out photos suddenly feels to be of the same value. It could work as a poster or a social media post to promote an event.

Having completed these final steps, I feel more confident with using this approach to help develop ideas. It make sense when you actually use it in the best possible way that works for you. When you allow yourself to let go of your own control on reality and bend the rules a little, new ideas and thoughts can be generated. when you cross the line, that's when you start having more fun! Which is something I have also come to learn with my approach in painting portraits.