Recently the collages have been starting this way: I know the subject, mood, and general intention of the picture beforehand. I go to this shelf which has hundreds of painted sheets (there are other places where I keep more sheets, but this is more than enough to choose from for now). I choose 3 colours in advance from these files (for the sky, ground, and tree mass). I choose a few more than that too, in case I want to play around a bit. But the 3 colours together go a long way to creating the mood wanted, so I go with that. This little selection process, in advance, also makes the whole thing more manageable. In this one the colours painted on were more limited as well, because I knew that I didn't want to paint much. I sometimes congratulate myself if an area is left entirely without added paint (the sky in this instance).
