Taking Flight

Last night I finally made time to begin creating something non-yarn related. I purchased the book "Taking Flight" by Kelly Rae Roberts on mixed media collage and have been reading and staring at it for over a month. I've always loved the look, artistic freedom and layers upon layers of creativity of collage art. I've been a long time admirer of magazines such as Somerset Studio; ooohing and aaahing over the beautiful creations within it's pages. I knew I wanted to give it a try but wasn't sure where to begin. This book explains step by step a few artists techniques.  

As a graphic designer, I was intimidated by the photoshopped digital collages using photos and textures that started gaining popularity in the late 90's. How did they achieve the right balance? How do they choose color adjustments? How do they make it look so right and not clumsy? I had a project that forced me to dive in and start experimenting with the digital piecework. It was all about trial and error. Even after this, the non-digital version of collage art seemed overwhelmingly difficult.

I wish I just dived into new creative projects without thinking about them too much. But I tend to read, observe, google, plan, learn and generally roll it around in my head far too long. So long that it becomes all the more of a daunting undertaking. Is my perfectionism slip showing? Then there's the tendency to think that I have to try to sell what I make. Why do I do that? Why not create for the sake of creating?  

I want to change, really. At least I took a first step last night and finally started on some small collage projects for practice. (See, there I go again, "for practice" because practice makes perfect. Ugh.) I finished one up this morning while having my coffee. My sister and her husband are flying to their vacation spot in Mexico which inspired me for the first one. After I finished, I glued it onto a card and am mailing it off to her today. It is far from perfect, looks nothing like the images in the book, is a bit strange looking and was just for fun. It's a start! And sometimes just getting started is the biggest step in "taking flight."

I have a few more projects started so will be making time to experiment and play with mixed media collage...finally!