In my latest full size collage, I had the opportunity to fabricate objects from my papers that I had never attempted before. One of these was a pistol, held in the viewer's perspective hand, which I will present as an example of the techniques I employed to depict the weapon.First, I started with a sketch on the poster board of where and what kind of gun I wanted and decided what role it would play in the overall composition. I found it very difficult to draw from memory so I soon turned to this reference photograph as a guide.
To get a better handle on the proper shading I converted the image to grayscale and resized it to fit the area I wanted the gun to occupy. To make things easy, I cut out and pasted my guide directly onto my poster board and incorporated the printout into my sketch.But before I could glue it down, I had to make some adjustments. I repositioned and rotated the print out as I saw how it would fit with the papers I had chosen to give the appearance of a hand holding the gun in the finished work. After a great deal of tweaking, I was able to get the angle I thought looked the most realistic.
Once again referring back to the original stock photograph I chose the papers I would use to color the gun metal. I tried various photographs of metal objects from my binder marked, Building Materials, but wasn't satisfied with any of the colors or textures.I decided that solid colors, especially those that faded into black, would work best and selected the papers you can see pictured here. Paying close attention to the light and dark values, I used these papers to give the illusion of the gun metal.
Before I conceived of the design for this collage, I had found a background in an advertisement depicting metal in a honeycomb pattern, and realized I could take advantage of the spacing of these circles to create a straight-on view of a revolver cylinder. The perspective of this picture fragment was instrumental in influencing which stock photo I chose, the size of the pistol in my work, and ultimately was a deciding factor in the finished look of the collage. Many of my collages begin in this way, from a single picture fragment that I realize can be used in a unique way.
To make the bullets for the cylinder I chose metallic papers. I already had silver metallic papers in abundance but no warm colored ones to make the brass of the shell casings. Then I remembered a frame that I had recently spray-painted gold. I went through my scrap paper box and came up with the sheets that I had placed under the frame to protect my work surface. They seemed a good fit for the effect I wanted to create.To make the concentric circles of the casing and primer I had the use of a circle template and a three hole punch. To give the appearance that the primers had been struck, and lend some explanation as to why the cylinder would be open- as if to reload, I used a silver sharpie and a black pen to accentuate these details.
Making the handle of the gun wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. I started out with a selection of wood grain papers and used the lightest colored ones I had in stock to give the appearance of ancient sandalwood grips. I found that even while observing the proper shading and light source the grip looked like plastic.I decided to give the handle some richer tones by making a wash from burnt sienna and a little water. After several attempts I got the results I wanted. As an added effect, the behavior of the water on the paper surface pooled darker in the edges of the fragments I used to give the appearance of scratches. It is happy accidents like this one that make artwork fun to explore. I used acrylic paint to a greater extent in this collage than in any other to date.
If you found the techniques I used to be enriching to the overall viewing experience of my art, you may be interested in seeing a detail of my collage work in progress,
"The Rose".
And of course, the finished work:
The Rose by *picturefragments on deviantART
