I realized that collage might be more fun than drawing

I'm the type of person who, when drawing, doesn't know when to stop and ends up overworking the piece.
While the opinion that "you should plan it out properly first" is valid,
I even overwork the rough sketch.

I thought that maybe
trying a different technique
might lead to new discoveries,
so I'm making a collage sketchbookas I wrote in my previous post.

It's fun!

With drawing, I get dragged in by the real thing
and end up trying to draw realistically,
but since I use pencil sketches and
paper where the color can't be changed subtly,
I can't pursue realism from the start.

Also, instead of making things to use for a specific drawing,
I make parts from sketches I like
and combine them later to make a picture,
so I can just make parts without thinking about anything.

It's fun!

I'm going to make materials.

I'll add texture to colored paper and construction paper
using alcohol markers and colored pencils.
I've gotten wiser since last time,
and I've learned thatCoupy pencilsand
Dermatographsprovide better color coverage than colored pencils.

Even with monotonous colors,
coloring over them
changes them into colors with depth.

This is larger paper for covering wide areas.
The material is coloredcopy paper.

Copy paper can handle paint, so it's great!
You can just smear on any leftover acrylic paint
or printmaking ink.

I tear up the paper I made that way
and paste it onto another sheet.

If I cut it as is, I can make some nice-looking parts.

I could do this when assembling the picture,
but this way iseasier to do.

On the left are the materials I made this way, cut out.
It's hard to make them one by one,
but if you make the materials beforehand, you just have to cut them.

I'll combine them to make a picture.

Rabbit's house.

First, there was a door part,
and it's a picture I made starting from that.

The trick to making parts is
to do a solid base coat with color markersbefore pasting the paper.

Since I cut the paper randomly,
there are gaps,
but the color underneath peeks through, which also acts as an accent.

This also had the door as an initial part.
I made the rabbitintending to use it for the blue house,but when I placed it on top, the tones were similar,
so it didn't stand out,
and I remade it as a white rabbit.

Since the brown rabbit was left over,
this is Rabbit House 2.

The brown one is made from a single sheet of paper,
so it's closer to a sketch,
but the white one has many layers pasted on top,
so it has a slightly different atmosphere.

Swallows and the Castle

This is a picture that combines
the staircase partandthe building part,which I had intended to make into separate pictures.

For the staircase, I referenced the cluttered streetscape of a slum,
intending to make a picture with colorful shacks built on both sides of the stairs.

As I was making it,
the perspectivedidn't work out,
so I gave up and left the stairs aside.

When I combined it with the building that had no use,
it looked like a castle!

Weather Vane Dragon

This is also a combination ofa windowand
a weather vane dragonthat had no use.

The house in the background is the houses at the top of the slum stairs
that I intended to use for the Swallows and the Castle.

Since I colored the dragon with markers on tracing paper,
I had trouble gluing it.

Shrine of the Little Birds

This hadthe shrinefirst, and the floor part in the foreground was
the cat's yoga matfrom the previous article, but the colors were too harsh, so it was rejected.

The birds were the last thing I made.

When they weren't there, it had a Japanese flag composition with no movement,
so it felt boring, which is why I added them.

Cat on the Roof

For this one, I firstsketched the whole thingand then created the parts.

I thought this would be faster to make, but
that wasn't the case.
It took the most time.

These collages are
my idea notebooks, so
I think it's more fun if there areunintended encountersthat I didn't plan for myself,
so I'll keep making parts for now.

Parts

I'm looking forward to seeing
what kind of pictures
I can make using these!

Side note

Every morning when I turn on my computer,
the first thing I do is sketch images I find on Pinterest
that I think are "lovely," but

these days,images created by AIare mixed in,
so be careful when sketching from reference materials.

When it comes to creating accurate images,
AI is still pretty dumb.

There was a good pose of a honeybee,
so I was drawing it, but
something felt off.

The way the wings and legs were growing was weird!
The body was strangely shiny and too round.

The one on the left is a copy of a honeybee drawn by a painter I admire.

The one on the right is the suspicious one.

I didn't notice until I had drawn quite a bit.
I should observe carefully first and check if it's weird before I start drawing.

…But it was the best pose, though.
Maybe I should just fix it myself when I draw it…

After sketching every day for nearly half a year,
I've become able to draw
things I used to struggle with.

It's fun once you're able to draw them!

Let's keep at it steadily
and enjoy drawing!