The first exercise was to do a sketch on a light blue background. I decided to sketch some flowers to use in my final "collage" image. The original was done on a 1500x1500 pixel canvas.

The completed flower painting, done on one layer, was done using Pencils and Blenders.

Once the flowers were painted I needed a container for them. This bowl, painted using Pencils with different variants and Blenders, is based on a tutorial by Hillary. Thank you, Hillary!

My final painting combines the bowl and the flowers into one image. I had saved the flowers while still on the blue canvas. I selected the blue and deleted it. I then increased the height of the bowl painting and then added the new layer. Once I positioned the flowers in the bowl I erased the stems which were on the outside. Then I painted the additional yellow background on the bowl painting since adding to the height just added additional blue canvas. Finally I added some dark blue shadows under the leaves and bottom flower, used Blenders around the edges of the flowers and leaves to cover some blue background, and used the yellow paint to touch up some of the small areas where the blue background had not been deleted.

Framing and shadow effect done in Painter. I couldn't get the bevel effect to work based on the way I did the frame, or perhaps it was because I'd already added the shadow, so I did the bevel in PSP. I could have gone with the flat frame as I also liked the simplicity of it. The viewer should also imagine that these flowers have their stems in one of those pronged "frog" flower holders.

While this wasn't what I'd normally think of as a collage, it does result in an image which combines two separate images to create a third painting.