Making Myself An Avatar

After finding $100 in a wallet I hadn't used in a while yesterday, I treated myself by spending part of it on an online art journalling technique course.  I wanted to make myself a picture to post as my avatar, an image to go with my name on the forums for the course, instead of just a regular photo.  I was a little intimidated by the artwork some of the other students had posted as their photos so I only took a brief glance at them, and then got to work making my own.

Here's the finished piece:

First I painted a piece of watercolour paper, then added some ink, patterned tissue paper and more paint to the background for decoration.  Then I collaged a number of things together on the page using gel medium, including a picture of myself.  If you look closely, you can see my birth date, my current age, a favourite quote by Oscar Wilde, my name and the dictionary definition of it, a little bit of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, one of my favourite cities, and a typewriter to represent my love of writing.

I was tempted to keep going but thought maybe I had gone far enough.  That's the thing with collage, you're never quite sure how much is too much.  But it was so much fun to make, I'm going to have to do some more!