more collages to get them interested

OK it is the last week, before I give my art group a class in collaging. I don't know how I got into this, I have only ever collaged on a small scale for ATC's and this was originally the idea however somewhere along the line the objective changed.

A couple of weeks ago, I started to prepare them for the shock of making images with something other than paint and I showed a collage which I called "the ghost of the vale" ; and then last week I posted a collage in the style of Matisse, both the sort of thing which you could expect to find in the Fine Art world.

This week I have done one very quick photo montage

which I have called, "Indulgence", with apologies to ERIC. I simply took several photos from a sunday supplement and ran a craft knife around them to isolate the images which I wanted. I then layered a couple of text pages to a mountboard base. The photo elements were then positioned and when I was satisfied I glued them down. Twenty minutes tops to look thru the magazine, cut out the images, arrange and then glue. As an example I think it showed them that they could expect to complete something in the class/ workshop if they went for this sort of style. In its was not too different to the "Ghost of the Vale"

I also did a "scrapbooky" sort of collage to illustrate the idea of using different sorts of images and ephemera.

It was based around a weekend in Prague that my wife and I enjoyed last May. At the time i saved underground tickets, receipts, tourist fact cards and in fact anything which I could use. I had in mind doing something like this at a later date. I have also included images from photographs of the holiday, coins, an image of Father Christmas (Wenceslas ??) and some stamped images of a watch. The over-riding issue was that there was not enough time to see everything that we wanted to see.

As usual, I took the receipts and tickets and arranged them in a pleasing manner to form a background. I then glued them down. The main elements were then aadded to give a pleasing and acceptable composition. I kept adding more small elements until I decided that there was enough and the piece was finished

It is now up to the class next week to see what they make of the exercise. The objectives are to have fun, be a lot freer making images than they usually are and feel satisfied with something that they can take home. watch this space!