For my next painting I'm going to bring to life an ancient stag from the pages of a medieval manuscript. I have already made the landscape background using a paper collage technique, literally using scissors and glue to cut and paste. Many of the collage materials are derived from food packaging and I have a huge collection of useful pieces to choose from, all stored in order of colour. Sometimes when out grocery shopping I buy a packet of something in the supermarket just because I need that particular colour of packaging for my latest collage. I also use maps as a collage material and I have a huge collection of these as well. This particular landscape is based on a view I see regularly when travelling between Llanon and Talsarn in Ceredigion.
So far I have worked out the composition digitally in Photoshop, by scanning in my collage landscape and then superimposing a digital image of my chosen animal, in this case the stag I have named Snowy (for obvious reasons). Once I have adjusted his size and position within the composition I print this image out as a guide for my painting. I then delete the stag and print out just the landscape background onto good quality cartridge paper to form the ground for my painting of Mountain Snowy. Pictured here is the digital version from which I shall work.
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