My collage for LMAC #163 represents a festival of fire.
I was stumped when I first saw @shaka's template photo. Hence my late post (I don't enter the contest).
@shaka's Template Photo
I don't know how the theme of fire occurred to me, but once it did I knew I would want to create a kind of festival. Fire holds profound significance for many cultures and religions. It can represent renewal and purification. The Aztecs took the notion of purification and renewal a bit far with a grotesque ritual called The Binding Up of the Years.
Xiuhtecuhtli, Aztec God of Fire
Credit: Simon Burchell (Own work). Used under CC 3.0 Unported license.
Every 52 years they would begin the process of renewal by putting out all fires, then starting a new one on the chest of a captive. From this fire they would relight all the other fires. The Aztecs associated fire with the sun. They believed that if they didn't perform the ritual, (which was also called the New Fire Ceremony) the sun would not return.
While many of us may not believe we need to light fires to recall the sun, it is a fact that fire is an essential part of nature's cycle. When forests burn, nutrients are returned to the soil quickly. From this enriched soil, new life may grow. Lightning is essential to this cycle.
Naturally occurring fires have been part of grassland ecology for hundreds of thousands of years. When fires do not occur naturally, humans start them as part of land management.
My Collage
The fire in my collage is a good fire. That's how I imagine it, and so the people rejoice. These dancing figures are more like sprites that are filled with frenzy as the intensity of the fire builds. The celebrants dance in front of a burning forest and the (headless) religious figure carries a torch to light the symbolic fire tree.
Here are a few of the stages I went through to get the final result. I stumbled along and then thought of making people out of the trees. I printed out a black and white copy of the template (no color in my printer). I tried to outline figures from two trees, uploaded that image to my computer and then tried to make digital figures out of it.
My first attempt at a collage featured only two dancers. I made several frames for a GIF but the result simply wasn't interesting. Here is one of the frames.
I went back to the drawing board, added shrubbery in the background, found @m1alsan's lovely fire tree and began to move things around.
It took a while to get the look I was going for (a controlled forest fire). Then I started adding celebrants, the torch and the spidery creatures. The torch is really a match (contributed to LIL by @quantumg). The spidery creatures are adapted from a plant (contributed to LIL by @yaziris). I used lighting effects from Gimp to make the tree flame and the fire in the background blaze.
Here is a still of how it looks without animation.
My collage is simple, yet I am indebted to friends in the LMAC community for essential elements in the GIF. Here are the elements I borrowed from the LMAC Image Gallery, LIL.:
The fire tree from
@m1alsan
The torch bearer from
@muelli
The spidery creatures from
@yaziris
A photograph from Pixabay, contributed by geralt, provided the fiery background
Making collages is a creative exercise and a learning experience. This week I learned about the Aztec fire ritual! Please check out our new contest, #164, just published today. Make a collage and join in the fun.
You can see that LIL, the LMAC Image Library, is an important part of my collage creating process. Everyone on Hive can contribute to the library and borrow from the library. Learn about the procedure here.
I wish all my readers peace and health.
Explosive collage. It's interesting how fire features prominently in our stories, legends, and myths around the world. We speak of the Holy Fire, the burning bush, Shiva's flames, Dante's inferno, the fire of consciousness, and so on. Let's also not forget the witches burned in the past. It's as if we believe that fire has so much power, it can burn off imagined evils. The following is picture by Carl Jung in which he drew fire using the style reminescent of the "collective unconscious".
Wow, that's a great image. Kind of creepy and really suggestive at the same time. When I think about it, being able to make fire is what separated us from beasts. Supposed to be a major influence on human evolution :)
Thanks for your comment. As always, informative and interesting.
True. I hadn't noticed the details. It's from a series of illustrations in his red book. Interesting guy.
At the risk of incessantly repeating myself...love this!
☘️
Thank you very much. Please repeat yourself😅
Always something new to learn in your interesting collages, A.G. @agmoore. The ancients did cruel rituals to their people.
At first glance I thought it was a destructive fire but happy to learn it was a good one and the figures, even the headless one, were celebrating. 🔥 😊
Have a wonderful Sunday, my friend.
Thank you very much for visiting and for your kind comment.
Cruelty--sometimes deliberate, sometimes unconscious. All we can do is try to remember and be aware. I can think in the past when I wasn't as aware. I know you are and that a lot of animals have better lives because of you :)
It was a wonderful Sunday (was my birthday!). I hope yours was too.
A belated Happy Birthday, A.G. 🎉 You were born under the fire sign Aries, the first sign of zodiac. 🔥 Some of the general characteristics are motivated and passionate with a direct approach to subjects. Sounds right to me. 😊
♥️
Hello agmorre, I love your animated collages, today you are burning everything in the middle of a dance, it's quite a show :)
there are those who fight using fire with fire, others see it as stars in the sky or deities, it is good, bad, destructive and healing for me it is innocent of everything.
Thank you! They are certainly unsophisticated. I can let the child in me free when I do the collages.
I agree that fire is innocent of everything. We see it as we need it :)
Hope you are having a great day and that you have fun with this week's exercise in LMAC
You claim it's simple ma'am....
This is simply bizarre 😂🥺✨❤️
Fiery imagination and creativity blows from this collage, I'm wowed fr.
Hello my young friend,
Thank you for that dramatic response! I had fun making this and I certainly did want it be be expressive😆 I appreciate the comment and the reblog.
Hope there is relative peace and calm where you are.
Yesss I'm going for my second year in university in a bit and I'm so calm despite being utterly unprepared....
It's shocking 😂😂😂
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Un collage muy perturbador, @agmoore. Efectivo.