Medusa

Using an image I found online I have created a collage of the mythical creature/woman Medusa, the snake haired gorgon, but changing it slightly to suit my style.

Myrrha and Cinyras

Throughout the stories of the ancient Greeks and there mythology, the gods have  proved themselves to be extremely petty and spiteful, a prime example of this is the story of Myrrha and Cinyras, Cinyras was a king with a beautiful daughter Myrrha, the king often boasted that his daughter was farer than the goddess of beauty herself, this angered Aphrodite, as a punishment, she gave Myrrha a desire for her father no child should have, she was cursed to fantasize about him night after night, eventually, through the help of her servant, she tricked her father into thinking she was her mother, afterward when he had realised what he had done, he banished her, as she ran into the forest, she prayed for the gods to punish her. They accepted and turned her into a tree, she was pregnant with her incestuous baby who grew inside her and was raised by nymphs, and the child’s name was Adonis.

The myrrh from a tree is Myrrha’s tears.

I recreated this story with three alternate versions of Myrrha, as a tree, with the image of a myrrh tree branches as a boarder.

Promethues' Punishment

Prometheus

The champion Titan of humanity

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Prometheus was one of the elder gods overthrown by Zeus and his fellow Olympians and managed to save his twin brother and himself of the hideous punishment his other brothers Atlas and Menoetius had received by convincing his mother to side with Zeus during the war between the titans and Olympians.

As he was known for his wisdom he was given the task to create life  on earth to end the gods boredom, so he and his brother Epimetheus had created all of the animals out of clay and had given them there survival techniques, all apart from the humans, eventually Zeus gave the humans fire, as to survive but as a thanks for this gift, they had to sacrifice the majority of their meat to the gods, but Prometheus tricked Zeus and made the humans sacrifice the unimportant parts of the meat, such as the bones, fat and skin. Once Zeus found out, he took back his gift of fire and left the humans to die, but Prometheus had grown affectionate towards to the humans and stole fire from Zeus and gave it back to men. As punishment, Zeus ordered Hephaestus the blacksmith god to forge adamantine* chains and bound Prometheus, naked to the top of the Caucasian mountains, where he could not escape, the final part of his punishment was that everyday a gargantuan eagle would rip open his stomach and eat his liver, as he is an immortal the wound would heal overnight and the bird would return the feast again.

the image of Prometheus is a popular one, and one I find interesting. so I used an image of a statue, copied the face and added it to a collage of different interpretations of the story.

image based on 

*adamantine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adamant

Icarus

Icarus was the son of the master craftsmen Daedalus, who constructed his son a pair of wings from feathers and wax to escape from Crete, he then instructed him not to fly to close to the sun as the wax would melt, Icarus ignored this warning and his wings melted and he fell into the sea and drowned, the is now named after him, the Icarian sea.

I decided to carry on using the collage technique but in a different way then I am used to, by using the different coloured paper I have been able to use a variety of shades and tones and using white pencil to create my image. 

I have incorporated the sun faintly into the background of the image and i have also added the island of Crete at the bottom of the page

Island of Crete

other artist have depicted the story in different mediums such as painting and sculpture;

'The Fall of Icarus', 17th century, Musée Antoine Vivene

Draper Herbert James: Mourning for Icarus

Greek Collages

To start off the project, the first step was to build up a collection of images and materials of varying textures, and using these to create collages based around the chosen subject, I then found some books based on the Greek sculptures, although some of the sculptures weren't based around the mythology, the aspects of the statues were very visually appealing. I also used some images of paintings and sculptures I had found on-line and different images from and line qualities of paper from news papers and other magazines.

these are some of the collages I have produced so far;

This is the first piece I have done, I used a piece of paper to create a black line behind the images, I then stuck photocopied images of a drawing and painting I have done previously, the one on the top is a sketch of the Perseus and Medusa statue, the bottom left is a painting of the David statue.

I am quite proud of the way this piece has come out, I used an image I had photocopied to create a stencil I then used the stencil to cut out from a book based on Greek sculpture, I used the typing horizontally to create a posture and by tilting the letters for the helmet it shows certain angles as it does in the image.

for this image I have used tea to dye the paper a bronze colour to emulate the statue. I then sketched out an image of the statue shown above.

for the rest of the images i have used many types of papers with different tonal qualities to give different effects, one of which I am proud of is the old sepia looking paper such as an old encyclopaedia which I had photocopied images and drawings on.

I have used a certain style of composition in my collages to emphasize the difference between light and dark, and the images a certain structural quality. I feel this draws more attention to the main images and in unison give the image an interesting visual quality

In this image I have tried to experiment with a different style of collaging, though the image has no structural quality and looks unprofessional and disorganised.  

This image was the most complicated of all,  I used a piece of cardboard underneath the images to add a layers  and different textures, the image layered on top of the cardboard is an image i have photocopied onto a piece of paper i had already put which gives the image a layered effect, I then used several layers of images and different types of paper such as book exerts and an image of lightning also photocopied.

Mounted Collage

The unit requires us to stretch up a collage and mount it, I stuck to my style and created one I am pretty happy with.

Collage artists

The collage I create are generally very structured, I appreciate the composition of a fairly even and neat looking piece, if a piece is too busy if van become boring and over the top. Artists who I believe also have the need to create a very tidy or well-structured piece of work are; Peter Blake, Alexander Rodchencko and Kenneth Rougeau.

Alexander Rodchencko

Peter Blake

Kenneth Rougeau

http://paperstreetsupplies.com/art-and-artists/an-eclectic-collection-of-creative-collage-art-volume-i/