Trees and Nature in My Collage for LMAC #125

Every week @shaka presents a challenge in the LMAC collage contest. I try to wipe my mental slate clean when I consider these pictures. I don't want to see what is there, but try instead to see what might be there. This week exercise yielded results in a few moments.

This is @shaka's picture:

I almost immediately saw a horse, or a horse-like entity. I imagined the earth, trees and animals blending seamlessly together. My collage would represent a kind of artistic animism.

Certainly the idea of trees as being a font of life did not originate with me.

Here's an image from Iran, 5th or 6th century AD
Relief Plaque with Confronted Ibexes

Image credit: Daderot, Public Domain. Cincinnati Museum of Art Exhibit.

Here is another one from Iran, 1000 B. C.

Detail of a rhyton from Marlik

Credit: Behrouz.rayini. CC 4.0 license

Here is a suggestive image of a Banyan tree in India. The banyan tree is the national tree of India and is referenced in many sacred Hindu texts.
Banyan Tree
Credit: Ashish Sharma. CC 4.0 License

Making My Collage
I removed the structure at the center of the picture, broke it down into parts and re-formed it into the shape of a horse. The horse head came from a photo I had taken earlier in the day for next week's LIL contribution. I obviously had to smooth down the edges and color in the limbs of this creature to approximate the color of a horse. I left just enough tree moss to keep the horse/tree close to its original nature.

I looked for plants with which to adorn my animal, to make it one with nature. @onyechi and @mballesteros helped out with their contributions to LIL: flower from @onyechi and clover from @mballesteros.

I cleared the background and started to look for another entity to populate my collage. Playing around with constituent parts of @shaka's original tree gave me an upright figure. @redheadpei on LIL gave me a horse head, and I started to look around for branches. This I found on Pixabay, credit artrose.

The tree-like entity in the back on the left was added, then on the right a small tree-like creature with a goat head (from my contribution to LIL). There was something missing. Ah...@muelli's fantasy creature on LIL. @muelli also had contributed a donkey image, which served for the creature's head.

I added final touches--did some cleanup, heightened colors on flowers and branches, added plants to the ground, ran the picture through a light Lunapic filter, resized/reconfigured, and I was done. Gimp, Paint 3d and Paint were helpful in the process.

LIL, LMAC and Me
I have said it before in this space. I once failed art in school. Is it not amazing that with this background I feel free to express myself through art? That is the magic of this community. From the first, I was welcomed. Over time, I learned to loosen up and allow myself to see what I want in an image.

Since @shaka started LIL some months ago, I have found the exercise of making a collage even more intimate. I am familiar with many of the contributors and many of the images. Often, I don't use an image from LIL as it is presented, but shamelessly alter it. All images on LIL are public domain, and all may be used as a collagist/artist wishes. Anyone in the Hive community may contribute to LIL, and anyone may borrow from the library. Rules for contributing/borrowing may be found here.

If you haven't tried your hand at making a collage for LMAC, jump in. Learn more here. Of course there are prizes (I don't compete). This week there is an especially rich prize pool because a long-time LMAC supporter, @balte, has added 30 Hive to the pot. But winning a prize is not the best reason to make a collage. The best reason is the opportunity to express yourself and to grow within a welcoming community.

I thank everyone who participates in LIL and LMAC. I thank the talented team that makes the community possible: founder and administrator, @shaka; genius coder, @quantumg; and multi-talented curator/moderator @mballesteros.

Finally, I thank you for reading my blog. I wish all my readers a productive, creative week.