Saturday 16 November 2013

Creating A Photo-montage To Use As A Subject For Painting

I guess this could have gone on my art blog, it would seem to be a logical place but then this blog is all about collage and for me both these terms can be used in a similar manner.

It seems to depend upon where you are coming from, artists (that is painters) seem to call the sort of thing I am posting on this site a montage. But crafters (is that a real term?) seem to call a constructed image a collage. In the end does it really matter - I don't think so, but there does seem to be an element of exclusivity about collage versus montage from some artists.

The post is really about using photographs to create a new image from several original images anad then to use this as a subject for a painting. We all know and have been told time and time again that when painting a scene, we do not need to include every single element. And we can add things for interest and also move trees, lamposts and even buildings. All in the name of good composition. But what if we cut out some interesting images and moved them around to create a great compostion. Seeing it done at a recent demonstration at my art group  bought this very simple and straightforward idea home to me. It seemed obvious once we had seen the artist do it. And of course crafters do it all the time.

Here are three images collaged (montaged?) into one. I did this very quickly so the resulting new image could have been better scaled, i.e I think the fort should have been larger compared to the boat but it serves as an example.

 the boat

 the distant hills

the foreground
and the resulting montage

I will be taking a little time to find a few usable images and crating my own landscapes for future painting projects. BTW all photos are my own from a reecent holiday in Lanzarote.

Note I used Photoshhop for this (enables things like altering colour/tone and scaling) but with suitable images it can obviously be done by cutting and gluing paper images. Which is what I do of course for most of my craft projects.