New self-portrait series: Sometimes I scare myself / Digital Collage part 1

Digital collage is one of my favourite forms of art, I have done quite a few of these in the past and there is something really fun about the process! Though digital collage can be done in many different ways I seem to have developed a preferred method that I'll walk you through.

Starting Images

Obviously if you are collaging you need images to start with. For me, can be previous artworks I created, photos I took or sometimes I even use royalty free stock images.

For this particular project I used a quick selfie I took on my phone as a base.

Distortion

Next step after choosing the image/images tends to be distortion. I was introduced to Mirror Lab app by @soundwavesphoton and I absolutely adore it. For a mobile application it is extremely powerful and can create some beautiful and interesting results.

I imported this selfie into mirror lab and played around making 5 or 6 iterations of the image:

Layering and blend/erasing

Next I import these into digital editing software and layer them one on top of another. I play around with the size/orientation and opacity of each layer. Usually only working with two at a time before moving on to the next. I will also erase parts of images entirely allowing the background images to show through.

Working with the layers in this fashion allows me a lot of control and something about the chaotic final effect just works for me!

This is part 1 in the series, I did two more that I will be posting in the near future using the same images so you can see the radical difference of how many versions can be made when mixing them differently :)

Sometimes I scare myself...