Marf Challenge September 2015: Things you find outside

This month's theme is 'Things you find outside' and the idea behind it is the following:

You go outside, find things, take them home and make pictures with them. Whether you take that literally and create collages or just get inspired and find a different way to incorporate your findings in your work is up to you.

Personally, I love to take a break from all the drawing and painting and just do something different instead that doesn't require me to worry about concepts and ideas and wether I get that one brush stroke right or not. While I frowned quite a bit on collages when I was younger (like three years ago), I like to be able to take things that are already pretty to begin with and 'just' find a way to bring them into a pattern or composition I find aesthetically pleasing. 

Somehow it's satisfying in a very meditative kind of way (It's probably similar to people who like tidying their rooms/workspaces to clear their minds. Which I'm starting to believe, I'm quite partial to, too. 15 year old me would have laughed.) and makes it possible to simply focus on how the different objects play off each other, achieving a good balance or interesting compositions. Without the pressure of getting the technical part right, I end up taking a closer look at forms and weights and all that basic stuff, I sometimes brush over in favour of a fancy idea or need for detail. I like to believe it's good practice once in a while (Trying to find a reasonable excuse for spending hours sitting on the floor and pushing dead leaves over a piece of paper.), so this will be my approach to this month's challenge.

To help you get a better idea of what's going to happen here's some inspirational images:

Yeah, honestly I might end up putting three objects on a wooden surface. woah.

Also, seriously take a look at these, in case you don't know them yet, because they are awesome and make you want to spend your whole life arranging stuff.

Which is is maybe a crude way to summarize image making, but whatever.

Okay, enough of this, challenge: start!

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First of all, there's the 'going outside' thing. I'm somewhat of a hermit type, hiding away in my room, while occasionally glancing suspiciously out of the windows. There's life out there? Sounds fake.

(Also, hanging out on Tumblr way too much.)

Anyways, I've decided to pick up my camera this year again, which led to the habit of regularly going for extended walks and staring at that one tree for hours to finally get the freaking angle right. (yes, occasionally also hiding behind trees because who are all these potentially dangerous bipeds hovering all over the place?). It additionally means I'm being outside and keeping my eyes open. Which helps with seeing, obviously, but can lead to a new bird skull or pretty snail shell for your collection, too. Or pretty feathers, or leaves or twigs or anything, really. By now I'm a regular magpie. I see something shiny or dead on the path, stop dead in my tracks, pick it up and then either pocket it greedily or realize it's actually pretty disgusting and try to casually lose it again (ah no, I have not wanted this. I never touched this. You didn't see anything.).

Well then, I'm on my way finding pretty stuff now.

Pretty stuff and the occasional 6- or 8-legged pet.

Pretty stuff. Yes, it is.

Obviously this is a bit of a mess. I simply bagged everything I found outside that seemed remotely interesting, so now is a good time to pick out my favourites. (I didn't find any really cool (as in rare) stuff this time, but I believe you can make anything look pretty if you set your mind to it.) 

And then the games begin …

love those vertical parallels

also those horizontal parallels. I'm finding it difficult to find something to match the weight
of the curly bark in the bottom left corner.

What do you mean, my lines are allowed to cut the edge of the image?
Still, though. The pretty curly thing is heavy ...

Hm, yes. Photo conditions are currently less than ideal to put it mildly.

Ta-dah! Number one is alive!

Pretty sure, though there's another picture possible.

Hm. Not quite. Not really. A bit crowded.

                         

Ah, better. Could have gone several different ways, too, though.

The second one! I could go on like this forever, really, trying out endless possibilities with the same few things. For this month's challenge this will have to be enough, though!