I started this piece like I start most, by painting way too much paper! I had a clear colour pallet in mind when I started, so I made sure to paint a good selection of textures to chose from. Layering up Splattered paint worked really well to mimic the look of snow falling. The environment was made using just these papers, but for the owls I used papers from my very vast collection. I’m quite the paper hoarder!
Then It was time to start collaging… which never gets any less daunting. But first I needed some references to pull inspiration from. Usually, I try to use my own pictures as much as I can for my references, but my camera roll was definitely lacking in the snow department. So, I took to Pinterest and made this board winter pins, filled with lots of snowy goodness. I drew some rough thumbnails to map out the composition, which came to me quite quickly. With collaged landscapes I find having a really clear fore, mid and background works well to create a sense of distance in a scene.
Let the hours and hours of moving shapes around commence! For the sky, I knew I wanted it to be really simple, so I made it with just three rectangles, as I would be adding the owls on top and didn’t want things to get too busy. Now as for the rest, that wasn’t quite as fast. I slowly bit by bit worked my way along the hills, moving, rearranging and swapping out shapes as I went.
Once I had the hills in place, I added in the little details, which is always my favourite part. The church was very satisfying to make. I really struggled with adding in the bigger trees. Making them look somewhat realistic, and not like a bunch of rectangles connected to a slightly bigger rectangle is hard! I find with trees, a ripped edge does a lot to make it look real. It especially worked well to create the look of snow on top of a branch.
Once I was happy with the landscape, I drew some very rough owl templates to help me figure out where they would sit on the piece, and what size to collage them. These templates were a big help when it came to making the owls and getting the proportions correct. It was difficult to figure out the colour pallet of the birds, as I wanted to bring in more colour to the piece, but I also wanted them to look like they belonged in that environment. I got there eventually by using a mix of muted pinks and blues.
My first attempt at the back wing. The owl was looking too busy and stood out too much in the piece. So I chopped the wing off and tried again. Ahh the advantages of collage!
My second attempt at the back wing. This one is much more simplified and stylised. The blue works better with the colours of the piece, and helps to clearly show its further back than the front wing.
After three full days of collaging, the piece was finished, but one small issue… I didn’t like it. AAAAHHHH! ‘Okay not to worry, not to worry, theres potential for it to look great, it just needs a bit of photoshop wizardry,’ is what I was trying to convince myself. So, off I went in to the late hours trying fix all the things which were bugging me about this piece.
Things which were bugging me:
The snow was too uniform.
The moon was too big and the glow looks like and after thought… which it was!
The owls needed moving slightly to make for a better composition.
The pink gradient in the sky needed to be more impactful (theres only so much you can do with a coloured pencil)
And finally there was something missing, but I still didn’t know what that was.
I spent the next few hours tweaking things on photoshop, working my way through the list of changes I wanted to make. Amongst my editing panic, I had the huge realisation to put some swooping lines into the sky and what a different it makes. The piece went from looking quite basic, to looking magical, which Is what I always strive for! After making those changes I can happily say I love this piece, and I think its one of my best. The work had paid off.
Time to tidy all my papers away. Quite a tedious task, but very satisfying to clear it off of my desk. I try to keep as much paper as I can, but I could’t bring myself to organise the mess of tiny pieces. They did get pushed into the bin! Everything else I popped back into my paper folders, ready for my next collage.
Thanks for reading
Emily :)