Surrealism

7.5"x10"

7.5"x10"

For this project, I used my collage made prior to paint using acrylic paint on paper. To make the collage, I began searching through magazines to get inspiration. I then began seeing a pattern of the ocean within the Maine magazines–they all had coastal themes that I admired, being someone that loves our oceans myself. I then began searching for backgrounds that represented Maine's views. I found a sunset, and I found a beach scenery, and put them together to make the ultimate Maine scene. I then needed the surreal aspect of the collage so I took out the people in the scenes and replaced them with other creatures! Having them holding human items such as wine glasses as they watched the sunset sounded very surreal to me so I experimented and played around with many cutouts, until I settled with the ones I liked the most.

The materials I wanted to use created a tricky boundary I needed to over come. I finally found paint in my house after searching my old art closet and found various sponges too, which I then used for texture for the animals fur and hair, as well as the plant's leaves. I layered the paint to keep the painting looking like a collage and I experimented by adding whites to colors to create tones, and darkening colors with black to create shades.

As I began painting, I ran into a few obstacles. Some of the paint was very old that I was using from my house, so I had to experiment with making my own colors to fit the collage close enough. Also, many of my old brushes were dry and completely hard, but I used them to my advantage to create patterns such as dots and lines. Overall, I am very happy and proud with how my painting turned out.