Among the many crafts I am constantly working on, are these little dolls. I found using a sewing machine at night in front of the TV was just to loud and intrusive but sewing by hand wasn't. So I began sewing these little dolls for gifts. They turned out so cute I've put them in my Etsy shop.
I'd love to know what you think about the little dolls, ballerina dolls, fox dolls, bunny dolls, gnomes, and mouse dolls.
This collage is different from the others. I usually have a color photo to work with but this one is using a reference in black and white. Also, there is a car in the collage and usually don't like to have mechanical things in my collages of children.
As I always do, I did the background first and then used tracing paper to trace over my main subject. Then I collage her face and clothes directly onto the tracing paper. Why not? It's all paper after all. I found this one fun because of all the different elements that I don't usually include. I hope you find it so also.
I must have started this collage 2 years ago from a photo reference I created by mashing together 6 different photos. I wanted a farmer's market scene that would be intriguing and draw the audience in but I kept getting distracted by other projects. Each time I came back to this it seemed something was wrong or off about it and I'd soon lose interest. I don't know why I didn't throw it away and start over but I liked the concept too much to trash it.
This last time I came back to it, I saw what was bothering me. The face of the main focal point character was distorted. I had to redraw his nose and lower his eyes and it made all the difference. Then I decided the sky was too dark. It was a light blue I put in but even that little bit distracted from the focal point and also made it too dark and busy to be interesting. So I glued white and light grey pieces over the sky and light, light green over the trees in the background. That helped a lot. Then I traced all the background characters onto tracing paper so that I could collage them independently of the background and then glue them into place. It made quite a difference.
Finally, I got to work on the main character in the middle and decided on a red shirt. This helped to draw the eye to him as the focal point of the picture.
It was a beautiful party for my mother's 90th birthday. I agonized over what to get her. What do you get someone who has everything... except dad? So I created this collage using the old footage of my dad and baby brother at the lake in the 1960s.
Step 1. I started by isolating just the frame of the footage I wanted. That wasn't easy. The footage was originally shot in 8mm and then an uncle had projected it onto a screen and setting up a VHS camcorder, shot footage of the movie playing against the screen. The VHS tape doesn't freeze nicely like a digital video would but I did the best I could.
Step 2. Then I drew the picture and tweaked it as best I could to get a likeness before covering the background with blues for the water. To keep the likeness of my dad and brother, I traced them onto tracing paper.
Step 3. I then began to layer colored paper onto the tracking paper, working to get just the right light and shadow areas. It doesn't matter if you use orange for a face color if the values are in the right place.
Step 4. After gluing the tracing paper down against the water, I added words and pictures that I thought would add to the composition.
