Ever since I saw this painting years ago it was enthralled me. It's a based on a memory of the artist. It was his birthday and he didn't have any friends, so his aunt put party hats on her dogs and sat them near him so they could be his friends for the pictures.
So this began as one of my other facial features composite collages, but at some point I noticed how well these eyes merged with the base image and I just let the creative process flow and this sort of real life anime character came out.
My usual collage style is surreal scale work, but lately I've been pushing myself to try new things and I so wanted to get back to making face Frankensteins like I once did in elementary art class. Back then it was just fun (it still is just fun), but now I see they always end up with a really Picassoesque quality that I love.
This one has a couple of fun facts: 1) the "blouse" is actually a perfume bottle, continuing my exploration of using perfume bottles as clothing; 2) the hair piece that's on her back it's glued backwards, I had originally cut out the hair right but didn't notice and glued it backwards by mistake, I took it off and glued the right side up but then I kind of liked the mistake better, so I went ahead, took it off again and glued my happy little accident that you now see.
For the eagle eyed viewer an eye and the nose belong to a famous Hollywood star, one of the biggest in the 90s, and the other eyes and lips belong to a member of a family famous for being famous.