COLLAGE EDITS – PART 3 – WEEK 7
As shown in the sketchbook pages scanned in below, I decided on incorporating some illustrations for some fairly quick trials of collage, this was due to the fact that I had previously experimented with my own imagery, used found imagery in collages, created tactile collages which had then been digitally altered and therefore thought the next step would be to incorporate some type of illustration to not only potentially enhance my work, but to also play around, get used to using Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator again after not using them for quite a few months and see what is successful or not as effective for me as a creative designer. The collage below contains illustration that is composed of a tracing from the image of Daphne Oram, who I had recently researched as a pioneer for creating a new wave of experimental electronic music before most people, and layered it with text from a newspaper, along with faded out images of her practicing in the background which were used in order to keep the whole image more about her, while still being able to become distorted at some points, I wanted the colours to be more muted and therefore sourced a piece of text to use from a newspaper. The composition works well as there is a balance across the main page, on the left side, while creating some sort of movement by allowing a small amount to be brought onto the right side, something I had seen done quite often within graphic design layouts which were always quite successful; I just anted a more unique way of organising the different pieces of a collage across two pages as I need to think further into potential zine layout styles if I want to start creating one for the hand in soon.
The result of the experimentation led me to using Adobe Photoshop, similarly to how I had used it before, finding what was successful and incorporated that into my new collages, to show some development and improvement of my graphic design skills through analysis and refinement. Therefore using filters such as colour halftones, adding noise, lens blurs, radial blurs and mixing up the composition had all worked previously as I had mentioned, and led to the success of these collages shown above. I feel as if the colour halftone is such a good tool because it ties everything up in the image and puts it in one filter to harmonise and connect all the pieces in a more coherent manner.
The second image is the most successful in my eyes, experimenting with blur tools was fairly new to me, however I feel as if the technique of copying a layer on top of the blur and having it underneath works effectively to connect the foreground, which is a repeat of the blurred image but unblurred, and merges it well with the background ad they are the same, one is just blurred and one is not. Think I will aim to continue to experiment for now but will review everything I’ve done and see what is working well and what is not going as well currently in order for me to improve.
