Collage: The Practice Run

This is my finished project.

This is the right panel of my collage.

I Take Risks:
If you ask me, this entire thing was a risk.  I actually had a meticulous plan, or, at least, a meticulous idea, and only a little bit of it showed through here.  Originally, I was going to to a picture of a child with their knees bunched up on the left, and then a larger picture of a Juni B.- type child (is that a weird reference?) on the right, walking away, wearing this ridiculously pink, fluffy piece of cloth.  And there was always going to be a nighttime background, with stars and a moon.  And maybe the girl would be connected to the child on the ground by some of that white, webby stuff?  Like, a lace pathway?  And there would be one doily, in the corner, because anything else would be overkill.  And there was going to be a photo transfer somewhere, I just hadn't exactly figured out where.  The middle, maybe?
         Of course, the risk with planning your piece out before you know if you have the materials to collage it or not is that you never have the pieces of you want.  Well, I suppose I could've had the pieces I wanted if I was willing to expend many resources on accumulating them, but as it was, I worked with what was around the room, as well as a picture from the internet.  The entire thing was a risk, because I started without knowing where I was going, and even as I was going, I had no idea how it was going to turn out.

I Reflect:
I reflected on this project every day.  There wasn't enough on it, there was too much on it.  Things were awkwardly place, things were perfectly fine.  I went over board with the prismacolor white, I didn't use enough.  And, of course, I made stupid mistakes that needed immediate reflection and patching.
    As I have previously mentioned, I am the least patient person ever.  Like, ever.  So, I had this picture of a child, but it was facing the wrong way, so I decided to do a photo transfer with gesso.  And then the word was leaked that I'd have to let it dry over night. Or for a few days.  And that was unacceptable.  Absolutely unacceptable.  So, what I did was I cut out the kid, and then I drenched it in water.  And then I pealed the back layer of paper off the same way one would do if they were trying to photo transfer something. It worked perfectly!  At first.  When I picked up the kid, its face ripped, and when the paper dried you couldn't even tell that it was a kid.  So, you know.  I spent a good five minutes reflecting on that before I decided that I better put a lot of shiny paper everywhere so no one would notice.
       But, really, I did reflect. I know I'm being a little silly here, but this project requires a lot more thought than any others I've done, because the nature of collage is that none of the elements are reliable, as they are in other mediums, so you constantly have to consider what you're doing and your next steps.

I Communicate Through My Work:
This collage is actually ridiculously maudlin.  The child sitting on the doily is supposed to be me.  I have no idea why I'm sitting on a doily, it just went together nicely.  The lady walking away from me is supposed to be my cousin, but really, it's the back of a Carly Rae Jepsen ad (merely flipped over because gesso photo transfers evidently take a while), and a piece of pink cloth that's supposed to be a scarf.  See, when I was a kid, I lived an hour and a half away from my cousin, and I had this thing, where I would idolize older girls. Whenever we saw my cousin, I'd let her dress me up and I'd do whatever she said.  As we got older, the fact that I didn't like High School Musical and the Jonas Brothers became painfully obvious--and the fact that she matured differently than I did.  She was girly and stylish and put-together, and everything that I was not.  Am not. So, I feel very left behind whenever I see her. I feel like a little kid, left behind, while she walks away from me, as perfect as she's always been.
    I don't know why it's the night time.  I had the idea about doing it the cosmos, or something, like, I was all alone in the universe?  But, then Aiden was like "use that for clouds," and it was better than any other idea I'd had recently, so it went from there.  I liked the shiny stars mixed with the paper ones, though. I thought that was pretty cool.
    I have no idea what the prismacolors were for, though.  I just found it and started scribbling.

The right side of my collage: the poor,
lonely child who you can't even see because
gesso transfers take so long.  Seriously,
 it wasn't my fault. 

Planning.  Look how meticulously I planned my paper out!  I even
did it in layers!  And look how awfully I gessoed my paper and
at how many colors leaked through!