Computer Montage

Baltic Cruise

Computer montage

Charlene Brown

This was originally going to be a computer collage of highlights of our cruise. However, I like to use text in the local languages when putting together travel collages, and I soon discovered that the only category in which I had plentiful material in the various languages was Visa receipts. They produced an interesting enough pattern, but the effect was not particularly evocative. Collage wasn't the way to go with this picture.

Some of the others materials I had available were too good for a collage anyway. These included photos of fabulous artworks by Da Vinci, Della Robia, Kandinsky, and Matisse (I'd bought a fairly pricey permit to take my camera into the Hermitage in St. Petersburg) that were better suited to a montage.

Computers make the process of juxtaposing and superimposing pictures non-destructive, and greatly simplify the production of a montage. But they can complicate things too—by multiplying the number of possibilities. There are hundreds of ways to put photos—and, yes, a couple of Visa receipts—together, and I must have tried about half of them.

Just getting started had way too many possibilities. Eventually, I realized that a map covering the whole Baltic area was a perfect base.

Salon des Refusés

(click on image to enlarge)
Ghost Town near Lake Minnewanka

Ghost Town near Banff

Watercolour+crayon

@2005 Charlene Brown

I’ve been sending paintings to an international juried competition Painting on the Edge since 2005 and have been rejected every year. I have taken a proactive approach to all this rejection and now think of this body of work as my own personal Salon des Refusés, with ‘Ghost Town near Lake Minnewanka’ as the founding piece.

The town was Bankhead, a coal mining town that flourished at the turn of the twentieth century, but where little but some foundations and the steps up to the Catholic church remains. When the mine closed in the 1920s, most of the people and several buildings were moved into nearby Banff.

Different Strokes Challenge: Streets of San Francisco

DSFDF Challenge:

Streets of San Francisco

Watercolour, crayon, collage

Charlene Brown

This is my entry in the Week 44-45 Challenge on Karin Jurick’s blog, Different Strokes from Different Folks, and here’s the picture we’re all working from. There’s a huge number of entries this time, and some of them are terrific – have a look.