Series 5 - Class 5: Backgrounds and what I did to them

I wanted to start you off on this post with the backgrounds I used to create my positive self-portrait. I actually created two backgrounds, both of which you can print out and use in your own journal if you like. Here you go:

This blue background is made up of two pages below you can print separately.

This rosy background is made up of two pages below you can print separately.

To start off your self-portrait (as seen in the last post) start by drawing and/or cutting out a head and neck from either magazine images or scrapbooking paper, or painted papers. I've created a template for you on the last page of the handouts as well, but it's only a rough guideline. Feel free to change it as you go along ~ I did! And here's your handout:

I really can't say this enough: your self-portrait DOESN'T NEED TO LOOK LIKE YOU! Imagine your best self, your inner self, your future self, your child self, your artist self ... give yourself creative freedom and explore what you CAN be.

As you'll see in my finished self-portrait below, it looks *nothing* like me (at least on the outside).  That's what this exercise is about ~ play with things, move them around. Notice how I distributed each of the colours around the pages to unify them. I'll talk a bit about each half of the collage below, but here's the whole thing in one shot:

I wanted to mention a few things on the portrait side of the page:

First of all, for those of you who were in the class, remember how I said I could make "hair" out of spilled red wine from a magazine ad? Well, I think it turned out fine, although I did have to change the shape of the head slightly to get everything to look right.

I also wanted to mention my colour choices. Two items I decided on early (the blue background and the red hair) helped me decide what other colours to use for all the added detail later in the collaging process. If I'd wanted to bridge between the two colours, I would have used purple (which is red + blue), but I wanted strong contrast, so I chose orange (which is on the opposite side of the colour wheel from blue) and bright lime green (which is on the opposite side from red). These bold choices are what make the collage so vibrant ~ which is also not very much like the external me, but maybe secretly totally like the internal me? Once I'd set the colour palette, I was on the lookout for bits and bobs that would fit into one of those four colours. Here's the left-hand page slightly larger, so you can see those details:

On the right-hand side of the page, I wrote out my answers from the writing exercise on page 3 of the handouts on slips of scrapbooking paper, which I layered on other pieces of background paper that again created that POP of contrast, and then I outlined them with water-soluble crayons (the lovely Caran D'Ache Neocolors that I'm always going on about). Here it is slightly larger:

I also wanted to tell you creating this whole collage took about 4 hours. As usual, apart from setting the colour scheme and knowing that I was going to be including a face and my written answers from the exercise on page 3 of the handouts, 90% of what shows up on the page is just the random luck of finding something interesting to glue down. I "audition" each little bit as I go, sometimes liking it enough to glue it down, sometimes discarding something as "not right" only to pull it back in at the last minute. It's all about the play, and gaining confidence as you go. The more you do it, the more natural the process will seem.

If you haven't finished your slef-portrait collage yet, don't fret! We'll continue on with the process in our next class, which will be Wednesday, March 28 ~ usual place, usual time. You bring yourself (and your portrait so far) and I'll bring the usual fun art supplies to play with. See you there!