LIESL PFEFFER

I have an ongoing project of photographing the built and natural environment of my daily life, in order to document and understand the world in which we live. I then use these photographs in my collages, to create playful, seductive, idealized versions of the world, through which the indexical nature of photography is questioned.

Leisl Pfeffer

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Using combinations of toy and altered photos she has taken, vintage fabrics and drawings, Liesl constructs these abstract landscapes and gemstones, achieving great depth and dimension.

Liesl mainly uses digital softwares to create her final images by cropping photos and placing them together in a unique way. She very carefully chooses the right composition so that the photos worth together and collaborate to make the perfect abstract digital art.

Also in Pfeffer's work, she clearly selects the right photos that fit in the right colour theme. In her photos she displays the use of specific colour themes so the photos work together well, such as shown in her landscape collages where all the photographs used are very blue-dominated, with shots used showing the sea, the sky, clouds, and many more.

MY RECREATIONS

For this image, I have looked into the natural world side of Liesl's work and explored the different architecture and landscapes she used in her digital collages. I was inspired by her work to digitally create a mountainous landscape on Photoshop CC and use the same technique as creating diversity and depth to the image by collaging and overlapping different photos - all of which have been taken by me. In Liesl's naturistic collages, the photos she uses are all very naturistic and display the natural world so I used the same technique, by using images only of nature - such as rivers, lakes and the sky. Looking at the colours used in her work also, she always uses colours in the same colour sheme so they work together in harmony, such as blue and green, seen a lot in her natural work. I used the same technique here too by sticking to the main colours of blue and white, as you can see.

Just like all of the images I recreated from Liesl, I created this on Photoshop CC. On the other hand, this photo is not based on the natural world as this collage makes up a man-made aeroplane. Also, I focused on the pictures used to make up Liesl's collages and I found that she does not always use photos of the same theme, for example in one of her digital collages she uses random photos such as outer space, and then a building. So, for this collage, I chose photos from all sorts of genres but again, made sure to keep them in the same colour scheme so everything tied together and looked professional, similar to Liesl's. This time, I mainly based my photos off the colours white, grey and silver, as these are the typical colours associated with planes and so it will be more recognisable that this collage displays a plane. I also used a blue background as this symbolises the plane flying through the sky and it also makes the collage itself stand out and contrast more. Again, all of the photos used in this digital collage were taken by me.

This is another digital collage made by myself on Photoshop CC. This was inspired by Liesl's gem collages as she does a lot of recreations of gems such as diamonds and rubies, such as this. This collage also follows the rule of colour schemes, so this time, to symbolise a ruby's actual appearance, I picked the colour red for all of my photos to base around. As you can see in some of my shots included in the collage, I have used different shades of red ranging up to pink, to show my use of tone and to give the final collage more depth and to make it more abstract and interesting. Again, I have taken inspiration from Liesl to use random images not in the same genre, as I think this made the photo more unique and interesting to look at. Again, all of the photos included in this digital collage were taken by me.

This digital art was again made on Photoshop CC. This collage was again inspired by Liesl's gem work as this collage is supposed to be a gem-like love heart as the collage is split into different fragments similar to my ruby collage. The photos used in this collage are mostly in the same genre, again the natural world, as you can see I have uses shots of the sky, the sea, rivers, waterfalls etc. But, I have also contrasted that in some areas as I have included some diverse shots that are not natural, such as a shirt, a road and some letters. Again, everything included is in the same colour scheme of blue, white and grey so they all blend and tie together. For this digital collage, I have made the background a pale pastel yellow as I thought this colour worked well as yellow toned colours and blue toned colours are pretty much opposite each other on the colour wheel, so they contrast each other in harmony. Again, all shots included in the collage have been taken by me.

This is my last digital collage inspired by Liesl Pfeffer that I created on Photoshop CC. This collage represents a feather, and this time I used themed photographs for the collage so that the theme was very obvious and so the photos worked together well. The photo genre I used was water, so I used pictures of lakes, rivers, oceans. Using mostly photos of the same genre and similar colour in a collage with not a lot of different shots included makes the final collage seem more professional. The colour scheme I used was obviously blue as my main genre was water. Again, all of the photos used in this collage were taken by me.