The Brief

Copy or print off images that you most have an affinity with, from your sketchbooks.  For this exercise, you are going to combine selected elements by collaging them together, creating new images through editing, modifying and re-using content you have already produced throughout the entire unit.  To do this you might find it useful to refer back to the SCAMPER section in part three.  Having several versions of your pages, printed at various scales that you can draw more elements onto and be playful with, might stop you from getting precious.  If you are comfortable with software you may decide to make some digital versions.

Lay the action plan and images somewhere that you can look at them together.  Arrange your composite drawing to create connections between them.  You could end up with clusters of images that are important to you for different reasons and drawings that connect from one sketchbook to another.  There will be no wrong or right collections.  Just collections that mean something to you.

Approaching the brief

I have laid down all the copies of my sketchbook pages I would like to use and decided to also write down one word to describe each page to help me find connections.

I colour-coded the possible connections I could see to help organise my thoughts and find ideas.

Now that I have a few connection ideas, I am going to explore how they work in making collages. I was also going to use some wrapping paper that I collected in my sketchbook and a carrier bag that I had saved.

Some of the connections don’t make sense at first glance, but there are many possibilities that can be explored further, for instance, packaging for baby food, editorial for a vegan article, healthy eating or an article on travel, gardening or even on hobbies and reading.

My sketchbook contained many things that could be used in a coffee-based theme or even a birthday card.

Below I will show the raw collage pages I have created in my A3 sketchbook.

I went back and forth through the pages as the ideas and connections I have made sparked new possibilities.

I played around with making copies on coloured paper and changing my existing coloured illustrations to black and white.

As I continued making a new page, I became more daring and free in exploring different possible connections and also tried out some text.

Of course, these collages should be further developed through thumbnail sketches to come up with ideas for a specific brief.  The colours and clear message should also be explored, but for now, I had much fun seeing how the collages would translate to an illustration.

What I have learned through this exercise

This exercise was great for practising finding connections between different images in your sketchbook. It has also given me more confidence to practice my collaging skills and create a new image by means of using the SCAMPER techniques.