Digital collages

I realise that I am likely to be regarded by all you “real artists” out there as a bit of a charlatan because I have created these collages on the computer instead of using all that messy glue and paint.  In my defence I must say that all elements are my own photographs or scans and in the case of gestural marks were painted by myself and then scanned.

I started out thinking that I would try my hand at collage but would mock something up on the computer first but one thing led to another and here are the results.

This was my first effort which uses elements from an old door rescued from a skip, a rather derelict railway wagon, a letter written in 1925, cracked plaster on a stable wall, a Chinese airplane ticket, bolt heads from a church door and a few textures taken from other images.

I was sufficiently encouraged by this to try another one, this is based on a photograph of a small portion of a rather cracked tiled floor, it is in fact the floor of Hethel church mentioned in my previous blog, although I had no plans to try this when I photographed it, I just liked the colours and shapes.  To this floor image I have added elements from a 19c book, a piece of a very old farm wagon, an envelope from 1930, a small piece from some sheet music, the number 16 from an old railway wagon and a cast iron cog wheel that I found embedded in a wall. The paint drips and the black gestural mark were made on paper and scanned together with the number 7 and added using Photoshop CS4

By this time I thought I should try something rather more abstract and came up with this.  Everything here with the exception of the type was scanned and assembled in Photoshop, the Khadi paper and background texture were existing items and all other marks were painted on paper before scanning.

Although when printed these images lack the tactile and 3 dimensional qualities of a traditional collage they do have the advantage of making use of elements that it would be impossible to use in any other way.