Changing Perspective and Borrowing From a Master: My Collage for LMAC #183

Hello Hive community! I return this week with another collage for the LMAC collage contest--a contest I don't enter. Making collages is quite rewarding for me and pulls me back each week. The template for this round, #183 at first had me wondering what to do.

The Template by @shaka

There was a road, or gully, right in the middle of the frame. What to do with that gully, and not repeat what others had done? Water obviously could go in there, but the obvious never pleases me. So I was stumped.

I decided to break the picture up, take the gully out and put it in the foreground. I wanted to use the trees and foliage from the template, so I extracted one tree, trimmed it, stuck some of the foliage to it, and placed that denuded tree in the foreground gully.

I was still at a dead end, so I looked to some of my favorite artists for inspiration. I finally came up with a picture by Monet (on Pixabay), Sky and Clouds. I placed the gully in the foreground of that picture, chose to treat it as a road, and then began to brainstorm.

An interesting outcome of my search was this finding: roads cutting across a picture, such as mine does in my collage, are not favored. Roads, rivers, etc, mostly lead the eye to the horizon. I seemed to be breaking some basic rule of composition. Oh well, all my life I've been breaking rules so here I go again :)

Here are some examples of roads/rivers/etc. stretching to the horizon. All images are in the public domain. All came from Wikimedia Commons. Claude Monet (1840-1926); Paul Cezanne (1839-1906); L. A. Ring (1854-1933)

Now I was ready to commit sacrilege: change the work of a master. This I did not do comfortably, at first, but once I started I really got into it.

Monet's picture is rather somber, little color. Mine was going have red. I began to add pieces to change the character of the piece. Finally, a narrative emerged. Someone is on the road. Apples are spilling from the basket. The person stops to look. In the first version I lifted an elderly woman from Pixabay, but that didn't work. She was completely out of place.

I looked for a more suitable figure to be more actively engaged. That's when I found @quantumg's artist.

He was holding a brush in his hand. I replaced that with an apple, dressed him in more generic clothing. Still, he didn't look as though he fit, so I colored in the clothing better and ran the figure through the Monet filter on Lunapic. I put a beret (borrowed from one of the gents in the picture) on his head and thought, Ok, that'll do.

The cats are important because cats were necessary for controlling rats on boats, and in boatyards. Rats notoriously stowaway on boats, spread disease and ruin cargo.

@muelli's woman also needed to wear a jacket, so I put one on her to make her fit in better with the picture.

Apologies to Monet, but now I was getting into the picture and it felt OK. I had fun with it. I think he would approve of that.

I couldn't have done any of this without GIMP, Paint 3D, and Paint. Certainly, I couldn't have done any of it without LMAC members' contributions to the LIL Gallery. I thank:

• Canoe
  @redheadpei
  https://www.lmac.gallery/lil-gallery-image/7916

• Woman in canoe
  @muelli
  https://www.lmac.gallery/lil-gallery-image/7565

• Cat
  @yaziris
  https://www.lmac.gallery/lil-gallery-image/7654

• Cat
  @yaziris
  https://www.lmac.gallery/lil-gallery-image/7636

• Bucket
  @quantumg
  https://www.lmac.gallery/lil-gallery-image/14433

• Artist
  @quantumg
  https://www.lmac.gallery/lil-gallery-image/14519

• Apples
  @mballesteros
  https://www.lmac.gallery/lil-gallery-image/8050

I also thank the following contributors to Pixabay:

• Sky and Clouds by Claude Monet
  Pixabay 12019

• Elderly woman
  StockSnap Pixabay

• Flamencos
  Pexels Pixabay

• Blouse on @muelli's woman
  Pixabay mayapujiati

• Shirt on @quantumg's artist
  Pixabay Open clipart

• Pants on @quantumg's artist
  Pixabay open clipart

LMAC and LIL

You can see that LIL, the LMAC Image Library, was an essential part of my collage-creating process. Anyone on Hive can contribute to the library and everyone can borrow from it. Learn about the procedure here.

LMAC is full steam ahead in competitive mode, and the community is buzzing with creative activity. Be sure to check back on the community feed to see the exciting collages come in. Better yet, join us. Make a collage. As @shaka has often said, everyone is an artist.

Thank you for reading. Peace and health to all.