Tent collages

I want my artwork this project to move away from the restrained work that I sometimes tend to make when controlling my materials, such as drawing with pen and pencil. A lot of the contextual illustration I have been looking at is mainly collage or mixed media because I am drawn to the appeal of mixed textures and layering materials such as in Sybille Schenker's 'Hansel and Gretel'. After collecting my textures around Norwich I wanted to experiment with making my own collages.

It seemed a good place to start with the atmosphere of the circus and the mixture of stripy tents in all sorts of sizes and to try and replicate a sense of depth and variety in monochromatic textures. My first collage played with layering them to try and create a sense of depth and seeing how the shapes could work together and what textures were working better than others. 

Collage circus tents 1

I am really excited by my first collage as it is so different to the work I normally create but I find that refreshing; the process in this image making was more in the selection of my materials and my composition whereas I normally spend more time focusing on how to draw as accurately as I can. I think being more abstract allows me to free up my mark making and content more as these are my version of the circus tents from the book; I am not trying to replicate the stereotypical tent that everyone knows and recognises. I think this approach is more suitable as well because The Night Circus is meant to be unlike anything we have seen before, it takes a form of entertainment we all know and love and turns into something completely new and unfamiliar but essentially with the same purpose. I like the way the different tent textures contrast each other and I think the textures are working well because of the different quality in the thickness of grain/ line that makes the stripy tent fabric.

Collage circus tents 2

To develop my collage I wanted my next one to feel more grounded so I based them around a black spherical shape as all the tents are described as being surrounded by overlapping continuous circular pathways. I like the way the smooth curves of the circle contrast with the sharp angles of the triangular shapes but I prefer them to not be clustered together quite so much and more sporadic like in my first collage as the circus is meant to feel never-ending. 

I think to keep working with building my textures and materials will help me go in the right direction and tomorrow I would like to try and make some 3-dimensional tents as I bought some construction paper today and want to play around with 2D and 3D.