The American Landscape

Tying it all together

I am in the final process of bringing my Pre Major project together. But I am struggling to finish the concertina. It needs something else to tie it all together, but what?

After a tutorial with my course tutors, we came to the conclusion that it needed more of a journey to it. Through adding more silhouettes, and extra details like a skeleton in the dragon shaped rock and drawings of plants, it brings the image together as a final piece that is more interactive and highlights my journey.

Abstract Landscapes

After a group tutorial this morning, and a mini panic attack on the weekend (I’m starting to crack under pressure), I have some more ideas to carry on with my project. With my hand-in looming closer (16 days, fuck!) I need to get my ass into gear and complete a finished product.

Over the next two weeks I am going to create landscapes using abstract shapes, silhouettes and cut out shapes within the landscape. My end product will be a foldout, concertina booklet, that explores a continuous geometric form within the landscapes, as well as looking at pattern and texture. With the concertina form, I could start out with smaller geometric shapes that get larger.

Below are some cut out pages from National Geographic with some of my own patterns, textures and geometric experiments within the cut outs.

Digital Collaging

After a mini tutorial with my tutor last week, he helped me to stop over thinking and start having fun with my work. After hand-making some textures, I scanned them in to my computer. My tutor then sat and helped me to play around with cutting, pasting, playing with textures, using geometric shapes and changing the colour and opacity of images to create some digital collages.

These collages explore the landscape and photographs I took whilst on my two week trek over the summer in America. Through using hand-made textures and cutting out geometric shapes, I am adding another element to my photographs, highlighting how I saw the places through my eyes, and exaggerating the colours and shapes that really made these landscapes amazing and so memorable to me.

“It will come in handy if you never use it”

We had a visiting lecture from illustrator Martin O’Neill (@cutitoutstudio). It was really interesting to find out how he got into the style of collage, his processes and his inspirations!

Much of his inspirations have come from old found books, car boot sales, flea markets and old posters and pin-ups. He enjoys finding new and interesting textures with paint and decayed, old objects, leftover collage pieces, and items that have had a life, a use and a history.

Dan Eldon