Thursday, January 24, 2008

The Land of Oz

The EtsyRain Creative Challenge #5 is on a Wizard of Oz theme, so of course I had to give it a shot. Of course, I will be making more than one Wizard of Oz inspired piece, this is just the first.



It's an 8x10 collage, the biggest one I've ever made (at least within my adult life). The description on Etsy tells you about what the different images represent, but I gotta tell you about actually putting the thing together. :)

I had a basic idea in my head to begin with, about the structure of the piece overall. I wanted the central piece to be the Yellow Brick Road, and I started out with GRAND plans for it. We received an art supply catalog in the mail many months ago, and I've been hanging on to it for use in collages. When the art supply catalog shows off the assorted colors of paint that are available, they show what look like tiny bricks of color. So the yellow brick road is pieced together out of many many many little "paint samples." :)

The other pictures mainly came from a combination of archaeology magazines, kids magazines, and fashion magazines. It's funny to realize that, but when you're making collages, there are quite a few ways you can work with pretty much anything you have available. It's all about looking beyond the original composition of a fashion ad, for example, and picking out the pieces that work for your collage.

I think my main obsession with collages is that I can pretty much just use stuff that otherwise would need to be recycled or trashed. Even the base for this collage was "trash"--it was the piece of cardboard that came inside of a thermal shirt package. It's a perfectly nice piece of cardboard, and now it's even nicer with a Wizard of Oz collage attached to it! :)

3 comments:

katy said...

VERY cool, Dawn. I love things that you see something new each time you look at it.

' said...

I love it! What a great piece! Can't wait to see what other pieces you have in mind! Such a fun challenge!

Dawn said...

Two words. Flying monkeys. :)

(I only have a slight monkey obsession...)