Here I started making the collage. I had a basic knowledge of what colours I wanted everything to be and worked to that, tearing up magazines (mainly PostScript magazines, since these have small text which looks particularly effective in collage), which I added to a rough guideline. I used the main colours and improvised with some others too, whatever looked interesting and sometimes a challenge from the material I had. I started with the red hunting hat, which the main character wears with the peak round to the back.
I feel the eyes look quite like Picasso's work, since I have added 2 eyes where only 1 would normally be seen from this angle. In the hair I included a picture of a squirrel and a giraffe's fur to illustrate the zoo that Holden Caulfield (protagonist) visits with his sister, Phoebe, in the book. For the face I also included train routes, because Holden is often travelling, in trains, buses and taxis.
I have showed him breathing out smoke as he is a heavy smoker and also it is set in winter time so it could be interpreted as cold air coming from his mouth. This shows lots of text with lots of black and white printed images accompanying it.
Finally I painted the background in acrylics. I firstly chose green however, green for a city didn't seem very appropriate, so I decided on purples and pinks, as they show a slight distortion. The finishing touches include collaged ducks flying behind in the cityscape, since Caulfield often thinks about where the ducks go when the lagoon in New York freezes over during winter. I'm going to attempt the same layout in gouache paints, but I think the collage makes Holden anonymous (which is what I wanted to achieve) and the mixture of materials creates a different atmosphere.
Evaluating the piece (and with advice from tutors), I should use a lighter tone and have more contrast in the final image.
Size = 275mm x 200mm (spine = approx. 20mm)
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