Collage - An Experiment Gone Horribly Awwright

So, every year at my high school we had one week dedicated to a justice topic of some sort (People with disabilities, Immigration, Clean Water, etc.), but my senior year they decided that that was not enough -- and so JustARTS was born. Everyone in the school was encouraged to do something artistic -- write a poem, create a play, do a dance, something -- to address an issue they found important.

Some of these were kind of disturbing.
Example - The interpretive dance of domestic abuse.
Better example - The collage of EVERYONE IN THE SCHOOL's yearbook photos in the shape of a fetus, and a message to the effect of "Don't abort me."

Some of the others were really cool, though, and we had a whole hallway full from floor to ceiling.

I decided I would tackle pollution, and so I made this:




I made this collage out of a large pile of catalogs I hijacked from the promotional products store I worked at (with permission), along with the pages of a phone book, some tin foil, copious amounts of acrylics, and a board I dug out of somewhere.

My Inappropriate Love of Gouache

Although I did not know it at the time I first discovered it, there are actually several different techniques for using watercolors. I was trained in the transparent technique, in which you layer wash upon wash (or, in the case of young me in an art class, a single wash in each India-ink-penned section) in order to build a more shimmery, glowing finish. (Since you are using the white of the page to lighten your colors, the light that goes through the pigment and then reflects back out makes the work seem softer and more stained-glass like.)

In my youth, however, I was given more art kits than an actual art store, due to the fact that they are awesome gifts, and if you know someone artsy you always feel the need to get them art supplies. In these kits were my new best friend -- tube watercolors.

(In my art classes, we were just given the usual Prang trays, but we weren't allowed to use any of the colors besides red, yellow, blue, and black. This was, at the time, unholy frustrating, but now I can't even imagine using a pre-made color, so I guess they succeeded. )

Drunk with the power of the tube watercolor, I began to experiment, applying them thicker than is possible (or at least easy) with the solids, sometimes even applying them directly to the page and then smudging them around from there. It was a beautiful time in my life.

Then, several years later, in my Senior year of high school, I took a painting class in which we were given the formal name of this art form --
Gouache. Apparently the difference between this and transparent watercolors is really only one thing -- gouache takes a tube of white watercolor, and uses that instead of the page's natural whiteness to create a lighter or darker color.

This makes an overall more solid, less fragile piece of art, which I am absolutely in love with. (Although I am absolutely in love with most things, so I don't know how much good that does.)

My very first documented gouache was from my freshman or sophomore year, when my friend wanted me to do a mural for her room, and I was somehow under the impression that watercolor would give me a good basis for my wall-paint extravaganza.




That, however, still had some elements of transparent watercolor, seeing as I didn't actually have any idea of what I was doing, or that white watercolors existed. In my art class, gifted with the magic of the glorious tube of china white, I made this:




We were forced to make the poem a part of it, which I found a little more than annoying, but I kind of like it.