Adopt a pet

This is supposed to be a golden retriever puppy. At least, I tried to get the right shade of blonde but the little guy is still a little on the peachy side.

Go on, feed him a bikkie. Wrooff!!

adopt your own virtual pet!

Views from Mount Faber

This is about as good as it gets in Singapore, as far as scenic views go.

Meta-Collage: A collage of collages

I have one of these as a desktop wallpaper. Great idea, if I may say so myself. Adds a splash of colour to the desktop.

Collage Mania

The Japanese are just marvelous. They come up with the quirkiest ideas for entertainment. Here is a ridiculously fun diversion for making collages online.

Mixed Themes

This one above was my first collage. I did not have a specific theme in mind, choosing images that looked appealing when layered. I liked the way it turned out visually, with the shark seeming to swoop out of the montage towards the oncoming shool of fish. However, thematically, this was rather schizophrenic - food fetish, butterfly fixation, landscape and architectural admiration and a fascination with fish.

After a few initial attempts that prized colour above thematic continuity, I turned my hand to collages with specific subject matters. Layering and positioning of the pieces was much more challenging, as was deciding the proper perspective for larger pieces versus smaller cut-outs. I must say I was rather pleased with the results!

A World of Faces

This was by far and away the most difficult of the collages I attempted. I was cropping like a madwoman to get the correct sizes especially for the smaller cut-outs. When layering, it was also important not to cover too much of the underlying layer, and eyes always had to be displayed. The problem with a montage of faces is that the colours are uniformly, well, skin-coloured. As collages go, this is not visually as striking as others, but I am pleased with the results.

Nature

This was a tough one to do because animals come in such awkward shapes with their legs of varying lengths. In the end, I had to layer the background with landscape pictures to minimise the bits of white between the nature clippings. My favourite things about this collage are the yellow fish at the top and the red beetle in the centre. They really add a splash of colour to the whole and bring the collage to life.

Around the World

This is my personal favourite, partially because of my own love of travelling and partiality for beautiful landscapes and architecture. My main challenge here was to fill up the background with vibrant colours to contrast the greys, blues and green of the landscape photographs. I layered the background using clippings of smoke, fire and explosions. Not very environmentally friendly, but the colours did liven up the entire collage. I am particularly proud of the way I positioned the purplish column of smoke as if it was coming from the lip of Mount Fuji.

Lifestyle

This is my "modern woman" collage. Lots of girly stuff like make-up, flowers, handbags and shoes. But also a modern urban edge, seen in the sports shoes and basketball, the cars and the laptop and radio. This was really fun to do because of the range of colours that I had to play with. The flowers and make-up added vibrant reds and oranges.

Food Glorious Food

Ah, my favourite thing in the world: food! Like the Faces collage, this was done without any background layers, only food pictures. I got hungry while doing this. The biggest challenge was deciding how much to reveal of the roast chicken in the bottom left corner. It was delicious looking, but rendered the colour pallette rather boring, being mainly brown. In the end, I covered it with a plate of something more colourful.

Machine Mayhem

This is my "social commentary" collage. It is partially about transportation machinery (the cars, space shuttles and plane, etc) and the resultant pollution of the environment (the smoke and fire in the background). I also threw in a tank and a gun going BOOM! Taken as a whole, this collage is (rather pretentiously, I admit) is making a point about our dependence on machines which have been turned into weapons against our own survival. The coup-de-grace is the flash of purple lightning inverted upwards, showing the explosiveness of our machine-dependent world.