WHAT IS A LINE

In order to begin creating a selection of collages, the best place to start was to get a sense of the type of stuff I’d be needing. To do this, using the contents page of a Brother’s Grimm book from the library, a handful of titles were picked. Of course, in order to get a sense of the type of imagery needed, I needed to know the plot of the story. I’ve always enjoyed fairy tales, and as the Grimm’s stories a bit more twisted, they were a lot more enjoyable to read. To get a general overview, websites were also used.

To make things a bit more manageable and organised, categories were made for the different ‘cuttings’ to go into: 

- background, blocks of colour, pattern

- people, faces, hair

- objects (clothes, animals, accessories etc)

By doing this, it would be much easier to build up a final image using the different components, finding ones that worked well together. All the cuttings gathered are from either the latest issue of i-D magazine, and/or Wonderland magazine. These two issues worked particularly well as there were a number of editorial shoots that contained themes or imagery similar to the ‘fairy tale’. To begin with, I went through and cut out anything that I assumed may work well - focusing on particular colours (pastels etc) and particular features (long hair, ethereal, “quirky”). 

Once I’d had a go at putting some collage together, I wanted to see how they’d come up on screen. I started by simply scanning the separate images in but the light that came from the scanner didn’t make for a nice background. I didn’t want to have to glue the pieces as down, as this kind of finalised things, so I decided to use blue tac, and stuck them down on white A4. As the blue tac was slightly raised, however, the images didn’t fit together smoothly. I went back and looked at my research in order to gain some ideas.

John Gall appears to use found paper that may be old, marked or stained. This would have been perfect, however, I fail to own any old notebooks that may contain this type of paper. I considered using paper torn from books, but the writing may conflict with the text that I need to put on there. Occasionally, Gall simply uses a cream background, so I gave this a go, and finally forced myself to glue the images down. They scanned in so much more seamlessly, and it completely altered the colours of the cut out shapes, which was beautiful. 

Collage images taken from Feb issues of i-D magazine (Whatever The Weather) and Wonderland.