A whole greater than the sum of its parts?

Yesterday afternoon, as a relief from strict black and white, but still fascinated by the abstraction possible from man-made shadows, I printed a favourite photograph onto cartridge paper, chosen because I wanted a slightly soft edge to the lines in the image. To exploit its graphic quality, I had first intensified the black / white contrast in Photoshop and then enlarged the whole.

When the print was thoroughly dry, I applied bursts of colour with Faber-Castell Polychromos crayons (another reason for the choice of paper). I chose blue to hint at the water flowing below the footbridge in the picture and also because this particular shade of turquoise seemed to work well with the intense black of the shadows.

I then identified small snippets (like those above and below) that I felt worked individually as tiny pieces. I used a small square cardboard window and cropped them with a craft knife.

Then I rotated, positioned and arranged them into the grid form below in an attempt to give a whole which related also.

It was extraordinary how different the various arrangements looked ... but was the final whole that resulted from this bit of fun greater than the sum of its parts? I leave others to decide ...