My jaguar collage is from either my junior or senior year of high school.  I do not remember.  I also have no idea what exactly the topic of study was because clearly it started out as a charcoal drawing and then became an unfinished collage.

I am useless with a blank piece of paper and nothing in front of me to replicate. I cannot come up with my own ideas to save my life.  I also hate drawing so that doesn't help when I'm faced with a piece of empty white paper and told to draw something from my imagination. 

I vaguely remember my art teacher suggesting I look through the numerous magazines on the book cases in our class room and just draw something that catches my eye.  I settled on this guy immediately.  Charcoal is just about the only form of drawing I could tolerate.  I loved using my hands to smear the charcoal into and across the paper to create different shades of grey.  But drawing is drawing and I very quickly got to a point of

A) boredom (because I hate drawing),
B) frustration (because I am pretty piss-poor at drawing), and
C) slight panic because oh shit, i have to turn *something* in soon and now I'm short on time (because I'm so bad at drawing, to make anything decent, it takes me forever)

What I do remember very clearly from this project is that my art teach stepped in and suggested I collage him instead.  Wait.  That was an option?  I got out my Exacto knife and started thumbing through magazines looking for yellow of all tints, tones, and shades.

My jaguar came to life pretty quickly once I had a blade in my right hand.  I remember being ecstatic that the fashion magazines in our classroom were so kind to me, gifting me a perfume bottle and a white mouse for his muzzle, the eyes of Linda Evangelista (I think...well, I know it was one of the super models for sure because I remember being thrilled that only I would know that), and the very best part of this piece, Prince in a yellow suit.

I had enough yellow pieces to finish him and started to look for greys and browns to create the tree branch.  But, I kept looking at him and decided he didn't need them, he looked perfectly finished unfinished.