Grey Day Collage

Grey wet skies and gloomy light today.

A good excuse to settle in the den and play.

It is also a good way to get some colour back in the day!

I always enjoy making collage pictures and I use old printed papers from proof prints or cleaning rollers as my collage papers. This is really the closest I get to painting as I can cut or tear the shapes I want and cover large area with colours or cut small shapes to give detail.

Today I am just going to play with the idea of a bowl of fruit and see what happens. I have chosen some suitable coloured sheets - green for some pears and yellow for bananas - and I have some white paper with black ink marks that remind me of glazed bowls too.

Collage is a mix of creating your own jigsaw and it’s a satisfying puzzle to play with.

It is quite meditative choosing the right paper for the shape or colour you want.

The other way that I use collage is as a preliminary stage to a print.

I may well have drawn a basic image or layout for a print and then I will make a collage. I like the way you can move elements around and see how they work before sticking them down. I find it helpful both for composition and for colour choice.