Sunday, February 28, 2010

Rock. Paper. Scissors.

I hope that after I graduate, and pay back enough loans to move into a fairly decent home, that I have a spare room, with bookshelves filled with magazines and yellowed novels and stocked with rubber cement. Besides animation, I love creating collages. I actually see the two as very similar. For my stop motion and pixilation animations, I scour flea markets and thrift shops and eBay and basements for the best treasures. I find that older objects speak to me more so, possibly because if they're older, they must have more character. I use these objects to tell a story, often related to my daydreams. Collage is the same for me. I love looking through my stacks of magazines and finding pieces that fit together and tell a story. I usually don't know what that story is until I finish the puzzle. I love including text, especially when I start with text and look for images that fit what I have imagined. And sometimes, I create cut-out animation, because I decided that a static collage wasn't enough for my story.

I'm forever looking at collage artists for some more inspiration. One of my favorites, whom I discovered a couple summers ago, is Aprile Elcich, who also runs Not Paper, a blog in which she features the work of other collage artists. I love that I can recognize many of the images Aprile uses from magazines that I also have sitting on my shelves. Some of the images have even made their way into my sketchbooks or cut out animations, so it's rather interesting to see the same image used in different ways. My favorite collection (for right now) of Aprile's is Oh Sweet Woods, in which she uses the last line or so of a page, and goes from there. That little snippet only leaves you wanting more.








(You can find more of Aprile's work on her Flickr and on sale in her Etsy shop.)


Last year, I was required in my drawing class to complete x-number of figure drawings, personal drawings, and collages in my sketchbook per week. Being required to collage allowed me more time to work in this medium; otherwise, my attention would be focused on finishing my real assignments. My little Moleskine sketchbook expanded by over an inch, and in just over 3 weeks, I had filled the entire thing up. It was almost entirely collages, and the rubber cement could be smelled even when it was being lugged around inside my purse. I wish that I had more time to collage this year. My sketchbook has been filling up with storyboard sketches and scribbles about ideas instead of layers of paper and little stories. I hope that after midterms, I have a more consistent schedule and can find time to collage on a regular basis.

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