I’m an Illustration student, as we were set a collage/montage project with the option of “The Universe” as a theme.  One of my classmates, Esme Lonsdale, (who you can see here!) made some beautiful textured, pastel galaxies and nebulae, and I took inspiration from her and the amazing posts of this blog to try my hand at it.  

There’s something pleasingly abstract in the globular organic shapes of space stuff that seems to lend itself to collage, and a welcome opportunity to play with colour.  I got completely carried away!

1) A collection of galaxies on brown card.  The splotchy reds/orange/yellows and blue/greens — these feature in all the pieces – are made from a powdered dye that react with bleach and salt.  They bleed perfectly for washy-cloudy-nebulae effects.  In some cases I used wax crayon to resist the ink.  Sunset and sea scenes from an old calendar neatly matched the colours.  There’s chocolate wrappers, white gel pen, and tip-ex in there too.

2 and 3) A black hole feeding – based on the gif here – with and without pearlescent ink clouds.

4) Something a bit more silly to finish!  Astronaut and Catronauts admiring a distant galaxy.