A Journey Called Collage

Week 1

What is Collage
Basic Collage Through The Gridded Process

My first collage features a collection of photos I took several years ago of doors in Colonial Wickford Village, by the sea, in Rhode Island.

The Process: I gathered the photos,for the collage, working in Photoshop CS2 where I cropped them, stored them to open and place in the Painter file. In Painter, I prepared the grid and guides and placed the photos. I was not so successful feeling the 'snap' I had expected in aligning them, but managed to get them lined and resized so that they fit together pretty snugly. I then used a blender brush to soften the edges where they met. I bordered the collage and added stylized text in Photoshop.

The next collage was organized in Photoshop. I worked with a collection of New York Botanical Garden photos I took while on a visit there a couple of years ago. This time, I was careful to crop each photo to a 2X3 inch or 3X2 inch rectangle (depending on the orientation of the image). I then made a grid with the areas matching the 2X3 inch photos. When I placed them in Photoshop, I was very much aware of the 'snapping' to the grids. Once all were cropped, it was really fun placing them into the file, moving them to align well with each other. Once that file was complete, I was ready for some fun in Painter. This is what the collage looked like...before Painter!

I wanted to use the Pattern Pen, masked, to create a floral border around the collage. In Photoshop, I took the photo of the large white waterlily, masked it to remove its background. I opened the .psd in Painter, captured the pattern which was the waterlily, then used the Pattern Pen to swirl a whole background which I then blended with the Sargent Brush. I then, in other layers, piled up the waterlilies with the Pattern Pen and gave them different blending modes. Back in Photoshop, I used a few Layer Styles to enhance the collage on its background.