Trying Something New

Collage has never really been my thing - neither has unrealistic subjects. But in my art class we were prompted to "say something new," and I decided to do this in both my subject matter and style. For the subject, I thought "what if?" "What if instead, fans sucked air in and pulled you through as a teleportation device? What if instead of eating and sleeping to get energy, we charged ourselves like a phone? What if our orange-scented soap bottle squeezed out actual oranges? What if that was how stores sold produce?"

The soap bottle-produce idea stuck with me, so I made some more sketches to develop it.

Next I gathered some reference photos.

Then I thought about what I could do for a different style. I knew I wanted this to be a more illustrated, almost 2D style, so I decided to do some collage. I could draw the background, and do the sign, person, and bags separately and put them on top to create an overlap. I wondered how I would create the see-through effect of the bag, and decided to just use an actual plastic bag and cut it to fit the shape I needed. This would also add a fun texture to the piece.

I brainstormed all the different fruits and veggies I could think of to put on the bottles, and created these in a repetitive, pattern style.

Once I saw how all the pieces would fit together, I started coloring each individual element.

Then I glued it all together to create the finished piece!

I had a ton of fun creating this one, and I love how it all turned out. Though there's a few parts, like the values in the produce bottles, that could be developed a bit more, I'm pleased with how my shot at something new went. I especially loved the idea of cut out figures, so maybe I'll play around with this more in the future!