Reflective Essay - Collages

The process for creating these collages was fairly simple. I just utilized the drag and drop with different groupings of images until I found ones that I thought fit well together. I did not go into any of these collages with a predetermined idea, it was more just moving the shapes around and seeing what I could come up with (however, the swastika was suggested to me by another classmate, I mean no offense by it). The ability to pull an unlimited amount of copies of an image from my library was very helpful, especially with the "snake eyes" collage. It did change my view of those symbols. Originally I had drawn the skull with the snake as a reference to the one picture that had the eye in it, and drew the dice because board games and some puzzles use dice. Once I put them together did I realize the dice did not have the 1 showing, which could mean it was on the top, creating "snake eyes."

Rather than having the collages distance me from my work or how I viewed my drawings, I think it brought me closer to them. I had a clear view of what all the dingbats were in my mind when I started and they transformed as the process continued which I enjoyed. The new meanings and variations could give me a better understanding of what I had before and let me see the images in a different light. As far as the shape of the document, I tried to stay within the lines, but with each subsequent collage I seemed to spread further and further apart. Maybe this was subliminal with wanting to branch out in more ways than one.

I do believe that this project allowed me to not think too literally about the images and my work. As a continuation of last week, it was kind of refreshing to just put images onto a blank canvas and just watch them evolve without having to figure out every specific piece of the puzzle. I think the ones that most gave me freedom were the face and "showdown" mainly because none of those images were placed as I had originally intended. I have a large backstory for what I feel is going on in "showdown" but I enjoy that the image can still speak to some level and be different by person.