Process of Duplicate Collage Essay

Deng Lin
Professor Cambridge
Blues Aesthetic
October 30, 2011
Process of duplicate collage
Duplicate an artwork is a way of respect artist and his artwork. Unlike plagiarist, duplicator expresses their admiration through art. Plagiarism is a way to take something and make it belongs to you without think it is someone’s work. But duplicate is a form make same thing similar to its original form. Despite the fact that both are making similar thing to its original form, duplicate is more likely for academic purpose, and plagiarism is more likely for economic purpose.
The topic is to duplicate Aaron Douglas’ artwork with collage form. So I gather myself enough scissors, glue or glue stick, and construction papers. Then I search on of Aaron Douglas’ art work online, and I find “The Creation” is the one I want to duplicate. I didn’t spend much time on understand the meaning of the artwork because Professor Hamilton just want us to duplicate what it looks like. The assignment is the duplicate one of Aaron Douglas’ work with the limitation of three colors and one background.
In second step, I start cutting shapes that match to the painting. Obviously I used to similar construction paper to original one, just to make people feel they are more connect to each other. I chose dark green, yellow, and red in my collage, although “The Creation” has four colors in it, due to the color limitation, I get rid of least use color. First, I use dark green construction paper cut a semi-oval shape, and then I cut down a rectangle and a circle. I cut two lines at rectangle’s both middle sides, to make it look like a person with its hand. Then I cut a line on circle, and cut the circle into similar shape in the painting. Then I cut some small oval shape, and connect them to form a plant that stands next to human. Then I use red construction paper to make a foot, a small start, and a semi-circle shape. Then I cut out series of yellow circle, and connect them together. I also cut down two long irregular rectangles, and replace them as rainbow. The cutting process takes me about 30 minutes. Since I am duplicate the painting, I notice I don’t need to spend much time arrange the shapes. I am just placing the shapes as similar as possible to the painting. So this process should take about 30 minutes. I made a mistake, so I took longer times, so be aware to glue things looks transparent first, things as rainbow, light, because those are transparent, and construction paper is not transparent. It takes me about another 30 minutes to fix the mistake; because it takes me time to think how cut the figure so it doesn’t cover any other part.
In general, the duplicate process takes around an hour without making any mistake. Although duplicate is a type of copy, but it is a way to admire artist and to respect artist through understand their work and recreate their artwork with your own hand. It is similar to bronze art creation, people duplicate bronze art to admire those bronze artists. Although I didn’t actual thinking what “The creation” means, but while I am duplicating it through collage, I am interpret the painting unconsciously.