Daisies in February

My new year began with a cheery batch of floral collages – continuing with the technique I was exploring at the end of last year – cut paper collage on a torn collage background. I have a huge stash of previously hand-decorated papers to choose from, vaguely separated into colour piles.

I’ve become a bit addicted to taking photographs to document  the creation of each painting. What began as photography for the blog/instagram/pinterest has become a very useful creative tool…

Sometimes it can take me ages to choose papers for the background and to arrange them with the end composition in mind. I need to think about where the top layer motifs will be placed and factor that in.

Then there’s the composition and colour choices to make….I confess that since getting an i-pad last summer, these choices have been much easier to make. I now photograph different layout possibilities before sticking them down and view them on the screen. The screen gives me a more objective view on the piece and makes the multitude of decisions easier. Just need to keep the i-pod well away from the glue!

This was my final layout choice, so I stuck everything down with matte medium and left it alone overnight.

In the morning, I fiddled around for a while trying to get the balance of the reds right – eventually adding the little strips to balance the red flower in the bottom corner. Then came some judicious stamping with blues and some white highlights and I’m calling it finished.

Can’t yet think of a name for it yet though – can you help?