Visual Language - collage, texture and shape

(Its really frustrating that blogger does not have a rotating option for pictures, but I do aim to come back and place all of these images the correct way up, but if they have not been then I am really sorry.) 

Using tea bags for Collage:

This is a medium that I am fond of using, they can create beautiful textures, are easy enough to manipulate and can work well when coloured. 

With this image below however, I need to consider more where I place it on my image, this bird looks unbalanced. In fact all of the examples of how I have used it below do. 

Using pro-marker pens to build up form with block shapes:

Creating form out of block shapes, this time with acrylic paint and a glue spreader to create the shape and the texture, which I think is quite interesting and suits the aesthetic of the jumpy and flighty little birds.

Building up a bird out of more gestural brush strokes:

Using dried Paint shapes to create new and different forms with, such as these birds:

I think that there is potential for this way of working to look really effective. They are simple as there is no varying colour or line work, yet the texture to the paint makes them lovely and expressive. I find this a very interesting approach to image making.

Multipage cutout/collage approach:

This image was a real breakthrough for me. For once I had created something that was more than just drawings on a sketchbook page, (this upside down image that can be found in my sketchbook pages where it can be better experienced.) This is closer to a more finished piece of work! A lot of it can be thanked to the very small sketchbook. This isn't a favourite sketchbook to use due to its limiting size, but because of this is pushed me to come up with the idea of cutting through and using several pages as layers to create one image. Working with this cut out paper, and ink on page approach meant that I could really enjoy. 

Sketchbooks, and their types can be hugely influential to the way that one (or me at least) works. This is a small one that I find restricting and tricky to draw in. As I'm not that fond of it pushed me into thinking about more creative uses with it. Which led me to this several page cut through shape effect, which I think is one of the best things in this book. These cut through collage like pages are particularly successful I think as for once they are images that are complete with in a frame, you could almost regard them as more finished illustrations, and that's a big step forward for me.

A texture I created above using vibrant brusho inks, that would be seen partially through the shapes cut out in the page before. As it was not all going to be clearly visible I was keen to have it a brazen colour like this.

Using shape with texture:

This is a drawing of an absolutely amazing image of the islands coastline, it was mostly expansive dark stones, and so I tried to use quink and mixing paint gel to create the interesting and quite beautiful rocks colour and hit at their texture too. This piece is really to small and unclear for any of that to come through, but perhaps if it had the frame that it desperately needs it would look more like that, and less just like some random paint brush testing in a page.