Mermaid collage

Mermaids (also known as Mami Wata) are popular mythological creatures that are often featured in West Adrican Folklore, beacause of this I knew very early on in my planing stages, that I would be incorporating mermaids into my work. To create this collage I first painted the mermaids using water colours, I then cut them out, and placed the cut out pieces around a piece of paper. After playing around with a few different placements, I realised that I couldn’t get the collage to look as I had invisioned in my mind. I then decided to play around with composition digitally, and created the final collage (above) using photoshop. On photoshop I was able to play with the size and scale of the individual mermaids, and was able to achieve my desired result.

I liked how distorted and loose the mermaids faces were, especially the colourful noses, I also really like the bleed affect that the water colours create. If I could change some things about the painting it would be my use of colour, I would use a much more limited colour palette, and avoided the brighter colours. I also felt that the painting/collage was too tight, and didn’t capture the loose and intuitive Asafo Flag art style.