It was really exciting getting a favorable assessment of my first assignment. This gives me the motivation to keep rolling forward.
For days I kept looking at the interesting way in which the color seeps from a teabag after its been soaking. This inspired me to commence my collage exploration with a selection of tea bags and various package labels. The diversity of tea bag packaging available makes for a fun mix of designs. My final picture was certainly colorful and playful.
The next idea I tried to follow was an image I saw in a magazine of this women with layers of flowing red lightweight fabric being blown by the wind. It had the appearance of delicate long flower petals. So I started to cut out the image along the lines of the drapery allo
wing the section to remain connected at selected points. I then played with combining this image with magazine picture of flowers. I did not feel totally happy with the depth of image achieved from the flat 2-dimensional images. I then started to add textures in the background. This still did not give the image the kind of impact that I thought it needed. Eventually I took a half-finished oil painting of mine and place a section of it in the background. The resulting images were very abstract but had an appeal that I was satisfied with. Somehow the image is still reminiscent of flowers but has a more intriguing abstract quality to it than previously.
Still not totally satisfied with my results, I decided to collect ite
ms while ona walk with my husband. The papers that are often stuck around lampposts and on fences with tear off contact numbers attracted my attention. Like the tea bags they have rust weathered stains which help to animate an otherwise boring piece of advertising. The variety of grasses along the paths caught my attention through the dynamic patterns their seed heads create. The final item I collected was a totally squashed NEXTEA tin.
So my next task was to combine these items in an interesting way with an ink wash drawing I had completed using a quote from a movie I had watched. I played for a 
considerable amount of time with these images, trying them in various combinations. I like the way that the ink washes of my drawing correlate with the washed out staining of the advertisements. The rugged ragged appearance of the shami cloth I used behind the grass provide an interesting difference in textures.
In my final set of images I played with an orange plastic bag as the background. The color of the packet changes totally when subjected to minimal light and I really like its texture. The crisp white "Thank You" not adds a contrast and a slight quisical element to the collection of scrap items.
As can be seen by these pictures I added frames by changing the size of the canvas settings.
For the remainder of the time I read through the information on printers. Printers are truly amazing pieces of electrictronic equipment. I use them regularly in my professsion and rarely give their workings any thought.
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