DIY Interlude (Part V: The Conclusion)

Alright, we've reached the dramatic conclusion! This collage project did incorporate some of the suggestions that you guys gave me, but unfortunately I could not incorporate all the ones I received (sorry!). However, I think that the final product is radiant. I incorporated ideas of interior/exterior in order to show that you can be whoever you want both inside and out - although, another purely aesthetic reason that I used strips instead of the whole block was because I enjoyed the collage pieces underneath and didn't want to block them entirely! I also attempted to use a diverse set of library book covers in order to represent diversity in as best a way as I could. Read on to see the final product and the last bits of the process!

DIY Interlude: Process (Part IV)

Alright, we're back on track. This post is all about the concept art that will go into the final collage edits - I chose to work it out in Photoshop beforehand rather than draw and erase over and over (I'm much better at vectoring than using hand-eye coordination!).

I used two reference pictures for this one, both taken during my high school years. One is of me attempting to eat a balloon and the other is of a friend of mine jumping through the air.

DIY Interlude: Please Stand By

I am at an impasse.

I have come to love the broadsheets that I have created for the collage project so much that I feel it would almost be better to leave them as is (as opposed to cutting them up into all sorts of cool shapes), although that was not my original intention for the project. What's a crafter to do?

I believe that this "stuck-ness" is another part of my process that gets downplayed when looking at the finished project. In the midst of things, I will spend countless hours thinking about how to do something that will end up taking about two hours total. Brainstorming and setting those thoughts aside to gestate for a little while is ultimately an integral piece of the whole creativity pie.

So, fair readers, I entreat you to help me out. Check out the last DIY Interlude post and tell me: how would you like to see these pieces end up? Cut into shapes? Left as is? Something completely different? Let me know!*

*And, if I don't get any comments, it'll just be one big surprise!

Take a look at the rest of this collage process in steps one, two, four and five.
You can also check out some more posts featuring my photography.

DIY Interlude: Collage Process (Part II)

Here we are, back for part two! This post is in the form of a photographic narrative, so every chunk of text is accompanied by a colorful and enlightening photograph. Read on and enjoy!

DIY Interlude: Collage Process (Part I)

In this post, I want to begin take you through my process of making art through the example of making a collage. I have been wanting to start this project for a while now, so I think it will be interesting to track my steps over the next few weeks. Hope you have a good time watching it all unfold!

First Stage: Ideas
I always struggle in the idea process. I have an idea, think it's great, revise it over and over, and stress about what was reallythe best iteration of that idea. For example, here are some sketches that I did in thinking about this collage project (click for it to be bigger):

If you multiply all the sections of these sketches by about 1000, then you will get the amount of re-workings that I performed in my head. One big one was that the slogan I wanted to use changed from "EVERY WOMAN IS A REAL WOMAN" to "COME AS YOU ARE." I am also still not sure about the pose that I want to use.

I also laid out the large pieces of paper I'll be working on in several different configurations until I came down to this one as my favorite:

Take a look at the rest of this collage process in steps two, three, four and five.
You can also check out some more posts featuring my photography.

DIY Interlude: Small Pieces, Big Results

I have recently been drawing on note cards. And I have heard that some really talented writers use the method of writing a sentence on a note card (or sticky note) as a way to keep trucking on through a difficult scene. And story-boarding has been a technique in the television/movie/video game business for quite some time. So what's the craze with all these little blank squares?

Well, for one, they aren't really that intimidating. They're not infinite capacity (like a Word document) and they're not larger than your head. You don't have to feel like you're going to succumb to madness if you tell yourself that all you have to finish is writing the next sentence, drawing the next panel, or making the next study flash card for your social psychology class. They are just bite-sized enough that you can get them done in a limited amount of time, and easily carried on the go.

Besides these benefits, I think the appeal of note cards or sticky notes is just the fact that you can rearrange them. Drawing from my own experience, I find that editing a paper makes me really nervous if I don't make little annotations in between sentences such as "EDIT!" or "USE DIFFERENT WORD" or "WRITE TOPIC SENTENCE, DANGIT!" I have come to the conclusion that it is less my own madness and more the fact that when a paper is written out on a computer screen, it looks complete. Done. Presto. There's absolutely no more work that has to be done on it. Right?

I think that generalizing the usefulness of note cards and sticky notes can be really helpful. Even if you are not literally sitting down with a bunch of 3x5" cards and proceeding to draw your next masterpiece, you can use the same logic. How about writing a sentence per day in a notebook so that you can get to your ultimate writing goal? Or drawing a picture section by section (or stage by stage: contour, color, shading, background)? Taking small pieces can make a really great whole. And you won't be freaked out by the monolithic "done-ness" of a particular thing - it's always easily editable, easily moved around, and never set in stone.

Give the note card thing a try and see if you like it, and be sure to leave a comment about what you think of doing things in small chunks!

Hound

Hound

I used Word Nerd today and got this word. I was almost going to find another one - it was so difficult for me to think about where to find this word (I am not a dog owner, nor did I have a thought towards embodying this verb). For a while, I thought I should just do another downward dog pose from yoga and call it a day.
And then, I started cutting.
All the little college packets that I collected in order to save paper/have fun craft items to work with have now been cut up or recycled, making it much easier for me to start my new mission of collages and decoupage! Hoorah! However, I still have about 20+ magazines in a box that desperately need to be shown the same treatment. Hmm... long weekend, perhaps?
Anyway, I got some really great pictures and captions, so I just grabbed a large slab of black paper and started strewing them around and... WHABASH! There was the hound I was looking for.
An attractive black and white dog photograph - now attached to all the eye-catching college mail that many many many colleges have sent me [even after I had gotten accepted Early Decision and sent in everything, geez]
Anyway, aside from that, today was a Thursday schedule, so we danced around trying to figure out our assignments and thanked our lucky stars that there were no tests and/or crises today. We still got to watch the Spirit Week video and Madame Sanchez was our sub in French [a Filipino woman who had coached my Highland tennis team - how time flies...]
As well, last night I wrote the monolithic sum of 1256 words in order to do the re-writing assignment for my editing class tomorrow. It was crazy! I don't know how I churned out that type of word count every day during NaNoWriMo (but then, of course, the point of NaNo is really to churn out as much crap as possible; for re-writing, you actually have to think)
That accomplished, I realize I have been spending gregarious amounts of time on myself. Quite refreshing, actually, but I am not sure how long it will last... hopefully throughout my lifetime, but who knows?

Which leads me to the question: what have you done for yourself today?

Check out some more posts featuring my photography.