Painted Collage

My class was given the task of creating a collage (with some elements of surrealism) and then attempting to recreate the collage with paint, with emphasis on color matching. The subject of my collage and painting are some Shiba Inu dogs (pronounced shee-bah ee-noo) , a tiger, a panda, flowers, and a man holding some flowers. The background is a lake scene with forest. For the collage, I cut out imagines from some National Geographic magazines and glued them onto paper. For the painting, I used pencil to sketch then acrylic and a little gouache.

The composition of this piece is a little wonky. There is a lot of information in the bottom half of the collage and on the top right side, however the top left hand side there is nothing. The whole collage looks kind of empty but I think the painting looks "fuller" since the subjects are enlarged. I used color to create some contrast. I used the color compliment of blue and orange with a muted blue and a more saturated orange-yellow. The basic rule of thumb is that one is supposed to use a smaller amount of the saturated color to draw the eye across the piece, and use the desaturated hue for the majority to create an amount of contrast that is pleasing to the eye. I tried to do this, but I think that I should've put something orange in the top-left corner to make better use of the space. I feel like there is more of a sense of unity in the painting since the collage looks choppy. I also didn't focus so much on shapes, which is something I would usually do when painting with acrylics. The shape language is so odd and blurry, and I wish that I could've emphasized the shapes. My project evolved some as I cut out a lot of pictures that I thought I was going to use. For example, I was contemplating on whether the man in the corner should be replaced with a giant bat face, child kayaking, or just leave the panda alone in the top. I decided on the man with the flowers as I thought he would go well with the flowers in the bottom of the piece.

The story that I made up for the collage and painting is that the tiger is trying to blend in with the dogs and infiltrate their ranks because he is lonely, and it's not working too well. The panda is slightly embarrassed for the tiger and the man is showing his support for the tiger by sprinkling down flowers because he is a florist. That's it. The project doesn't relate to my life, besides my predilection for Shiba Inu dogs. I am proud that I was able to provide accurate color matches to the collage and I really like how the panda turned out since his shape is the strongest and most confident. I struggled with painting the man and the tiger in particular. I think it was because of the smaller scale and the medium, but it was kind of difficult to establish them. I don't think I overcame this struggle, but I hope that the colors make up for it. If I were to do this project again I would make sure that I have a strong understanding of where the forms are and how to paint them, since the dogs are bigger and out of place. I also would probably make a bigger collage to prevent this as well. I would also make sure that my paint job isn't as patchy as it is.