Word Collage

Here's another Book of Me layout. I like to incorporate words as part of the art whenever I can, and here is one simple way to do it.  There's a million word collages out there, and I obviously didn't invent that concept.  I just made my own with a picture of myself.

This was fun for me to make because I like puzzles and lists. I simply jotted down some of the things that I enjoy doing, then spent some time fitting them together.

My initial idea was to do just “Things I Love,” but this would have confined me to a list of nouns. Being an action-oriented person, I found that I much prefer verbs.

I don't really like photographs of myself, but I thought it needed some visual image of the author. A silhouette was the solution. This is a self-portrait that I took in my basement studio. All I did to the picture was to add some contrast and lighten a red background into a more subdued pink. This effect can also be accomplished by photographing yourself in front of a white wall and cutting around it in GIMP.

I always say that it's important to put ourselves in our albums, too. A simple layout like this is one way to do it without worrying about fancy prose or imperfect skin.