Playing With Shapes: LMAC Freestyle

This is not a Christmas-themed collage. There is so much Christmas all around, what could I say that would add to the conversation? So I went in a completely different direction and followed my inclinations.

Chimes

Vortex With Eye

Disintegrating Vortex

Entropy

Escaping the Wormhole

Existing in Empty Spaces

LMAC has taken a brief holiday break. Our artists, however, continue to create 'freestyle' collages. Where does your imagination take you? Follow it. Have fun. You never know what you will end up with.

I started playing with an oval shape in the Paint program, and just kept playing. All the collages here began with a simple Paint oval.

I shaded, shaped, pushed and manipulated until my ideas took shape.

I enlisted a broom from @yaziris (LIL Gallery), an iguana from @muelli (LIL Gallery), and an eye from @alex2alex (LIL Gallery). I also borrowed musical notes from MahuaSarkar on Pixabay.

For the Chimes and the Existing in Spaces collages I used the same basic template.

Again, the shapes in this template all began with a simple oval.

For the vortex collages, I used a vortex template I had created by adding ovals of different sizes and shading them:

In order to make the collages I had to experiment with many, many frames until in each case I achieved the effect I was going for.

When it came to the chimes, I knew I was looking for a percussion instrument that could be brushed gently (with a broom) to make music. The image evolved as I worked. Here's a picture of organ chimes.

Chimes Attached to a Cathedral Organ,in Iowa, USA

Credit:Jesster79-commonswiki. Used under CC 1.2 license.

While my collage doesn't look exactly like the chimes in the picture, the idea is close enough.

And here is an illustration of another idea that evolved for one of my collages: a wormhole.

Credit: Pixabay, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
As an article from Scientific American explains, wormholes...act as "tunnels," connecting points in space-time... While my collage doesn't look exactly like a wormhole, it suggests one to me.

As for entropy. Here is a gif I found on Wikimedia Commons that shows the dynamic of entropy:

Credit:Jacopo Bertolotti. Public domain.
My collage represents the randomness, even chaos, of entropy. According to one definition, entropy is...the measure of the disorder of a system.

Sometimes I didn't have a clear idea of where I was going when I was making a collage, so had to toss many images.

Making these collages was an interesting exercise. I let my mind go where it wanted. In a sense, I let my hands guide me.

I hope you find the collages interesting.

The value of LIL in my efforts is obvious. Anyone on Hive can contribute to the library and everyone can borrow from it. Learn about the procedure here.

Every week we offer prizes to fifteen finalists in the contest, but it's not only the prizes people create for. Just as I spent hours giving free vent to my imagination for this blog, others in the community have developed the habit of 'speaking' through collage.

As @shaka has said many times, everyone is an artist. I may not be an artist in the technical sense, but LMAC allows me to nurture my own unique artistic voice.

When the contest resumes in January, join us. Or, better yet, create a freestyle and participate in the fun now.

Thank you for reading. Peace and health to all.