Collage on Wood - Boy and Caterpillar

This freakin piece of wood!
I had my honey pie Chris cut me up a few samples of birch plywood. Hochbaum was using birch plywood as his base, and I liked the idea of a firmer substrate. (the 140 lb paper isn't working for me and I am too cheap to purchase the 300 lb!) This particular piece of wood has been sitting in gessoland forever it seems. It took 3 good coats of gesso to get a nice smooth surface to work on, and after sanding the last coat, I decided it was time to try it out.
I love working on wood! The grain does pick up my paint, however, since I like to use acrylics watery and loose like watercolors. This effect came in handy for the distant trees, tho...

I wanted to show how this piece came into being. I had taken these 2 photos of a really gnarly willow and at first the actual laser print of the photo was going to be used as the background.

However, this would completely cover the beautifully sanded and gessoed wood I just spent all that time preparing! Oi! NO WAY I was going to waste that work and gesso... no way. Seriously! So I ended up painting an acrylic background. This was so satisfying as I have been craving to paint landscapes en plein air lately.
Finally I got to use the set of Derwent colored pencils my father bought me for Christmas, as I lightly penciled in the far background trees.
I hated to cover up the pen and ink with collage. In fact, as soon as I painted the piece, I didn't want to cover anything at all. Yet, when it was a laser photograph in the planning stages, I was hell bent on it. I guess I had an investment in the time it took to pen and ink and somehow this altered my perception when it came to put this together. All in all, it's pretty busy.

I did have moth wings on the boy, even real ones I have collected from, dare I say it, spider webs and other dark and miserable places. But the wing thing is pretty cliché and rather overdone. I would think you might want to imagine the tree branches as his wings as he will probably adorn them and take flight!!!