My research led me to an interview with Marcelo Montreal
https://www.photographize.co/interviews/marcelomonreal/.
He talks of the inspiration for his collages being a conversation with his mother who told him that people are made of flowers.
His work is about inner beauty. Cut outs in portraits reveal beautiful blooms beneath the public face of celebrates that he often works in collaboration with. It takes two days to produce a piece of work. In the interview he would spend much longer as he worked out what photo angles and cut marks worked.
Working with collage , I feel the tentativeness of Montreal’s early work. I enjoyed the process and can envisage using it more.
I made a decision to only use one magazine as source material along with a folder of papers that I started collecting for collage project in ATV – it pays to hoard art materials.
During the selection of images to use, I started by looking for colours but soon observed that my bigger interest was in making connections with the object I was collating, for example
-using images of hair to make the hair slides
-trees became pencils
– a tiger became sharpener
-the pen knife blade is a flower – only to be used peacefully
– key to ancestors -bone
– key to the universe =stars
– key to living in a capitalist society =gold
I found the selection process very meditative, there seemed to be a clear dialogue between me, the object, and the medium.
I documented my bag as I found it that day and was surprised more by what it lacked. The resulting drawing felt quite anonymous, different to other bags , however not particularly telling a full story, some clues to me but not a clear identity. I guess this is actually a fairly accurate summary of how we see people or situations, our own eyes cause our brains to form impressions however what is missing is a large part of the picture. We can present an image that we would like people to interpret but we can’t control what they will see. It is the same for an art work. Artistic intention may not be the same as people’s perception and this is probably ok. 
Before committing to glue, I played with placement of the collage pieces, this felt very cluttered, the purse hat kind of suits me though. I thought it quite clever that My sharp eyes are a sharpener made of tiger – eye of the tiger! I enjoy word play. I have a Victorinox smile. A transforming multi tool, sharp and cutting, I can open bottles with my teeth ( not really – that’s artistic license) 
speech is key, a key to open doors, to be understood you need to talk…..
In this orientation the knives are like little figures, whimsical, not dangerous. 
Bonkers!!! This clearly shows the importance of careful placement, I moved swiftly onto crazy head dress/hair
while making the larger iteration of the owl – the universal /ancestral owl I cut a shape from a wolf image, I noticed that serendipitously fitted my face, I became wolf girl!what a fierce transformation. I think it looks quite complete as a simple collage of two shapes.e
I played some more and then committed the shapes with glue to produce this portrait.
Having selected the items from my bag that I resonated with most I think that this probably says more about me than the contents of my bag drawing which contained mostly utilitarian objects, a penknife shows my preparedness for every opportunity, my just in case spirit of girl guide, trying to do my best.
I love that a pen knife (it is a tiny 40mm) that transforms can be transformed to wolf or human or owl depending on the rotation. 
in my sketch book I wrote a little about owls and ancestry. A relative used to raise birds of prey for wildlife parks and I got to hand feed them so there is another link there. Making multiples of owls of varying sizes to show a succession of ovum’s passed through the generations was the line of thought here. I was so absorbed by this process I think I got a little mad!
The final collage image reflects the work of Marcelo Montreal. One eye to the future , one to the past. There are some really interesting repeating shapes and smooth transitions – the beak/nose for example. I’m pleased with the hand/claws holding the keys. The wing echos my face shape on the left while the owl face sits well with the right eye socket.
https://www.textileartist.org/melissa-zexter-interview-embroidered-photography
i played around a little with digital manipulation of my completed wolf girl collage
Obviously in the early days of collage computer manipulation wasn’t possible. This is crossing the boundaries into photography/graphic design/computer graphics and many artists are working successfully with these mediums. I definitely engage more with a hands on process.