This week’s theme for the 52 Week Challenge is ‘Celestial Body’ and to be honest I had to do a bit of research to make sure that ‘moon’ fitted in this category!

I really didn’t know what to do for this prompt, so I decided to think a bit outside the square and come up with 3D collage illustration. I initially imagined a washing line with a cat walking across it, but decided not to include the clothes, so now it looks more like a power line across a city skyline.

I took progression photos so I could remember how I actually created the piece….

1. I painted the background using water colours. I then painted a moon on another piece of paper and then instead of cutting the circle shape, I decided to rip it to create some paper texture.

2. I glued the moon onto the back ground and then sketched out the skyline of buildings. I designed two layers of buildings, using a black pencil I shaded the back buildings darker (to give the illusion that they are further back)
I then put together the front buildings, again shading areas to give them some depth.

3. I glued the back buildings to the background.

4. To give some more depth, instead of just gluing the front layer of buildings down, I used double-sided tape to give a 3D effect.

5. I used coloured pencil to draw the black cat, I cut it out (using very fine tipped scissors) and stuck double-sided tape to him, ready to sit him on the wire.

6. To create the wire, I used some cotton twine. I pierced a hole at each end of the illustration and threaded it through, securing it on the back with some sticky tape.

To have the wire stand in front of the front building and be level with the 3D placed cat, I also had to include a very fine slither of double-sided tape.

The 3 Dimensional feel to the illustration doesn’t really show in the final photo, so here is what it looks like from the side.

This is what it looked like with the clothes on the washing line…..I just felt the colours weren’t contrasting enough and that the cat looked much better as the sole silhouette on the moon. What do you think?

I thoroughly enjoyed this little experiment, and I am keen to keep playing with collage and 3D effects.

Staying creative x
Nicky

To see another of my collage step by step blog posts you can read here (on the 52 Week Illustration Challenge Blog)