Collage Art and Lessons To Be Learned
If you’re anything like those within my circle of friends, then your artistic endeavors don’t end at the edge of your sketchbook or canvas. A guitarist may learn music on six strings, only to pick up a four-stringed bass and then maybe drums; an athlete often plays more than one sport; dancers almost always learn ballet, and then any other style they love, and writers cross genres daily. Few of us are like telephone poles, singularly existing. Rather, we’re more like maple trees, with a strong core of artistic love and creativity that branches out in many directions. So I hope you don’t mind if I veer slightly off the path of traditional painting and drawing instruction today and share with you some collage advice from ArtistsNetwork.com’s sister site, ClothPaperScissors.com, “where mixed-media artists come to play.”
3 Collage Art Lessons Learned by Cate Prato
- When in doubt, add paint. Paper, glue, and found objects are fine on their own, but paint can bring these elements together, unifying the piece, adding color, or knocking back elements that seem too prominent.
- Create under-texture. Start your collage with a base of textures glued to a substrate such as heavy watercolor paper: little scraps of maps, scrapbook paper, tags, fiber and so on.
- Get creative with free supplies. Use junk mail for paper, an old toothbrush for a spatter technique, corrugated coffee sleeves for stamping, and so on.
Continue reading Prato’s complete list of 13 tips for collage art here. And, click here to learn more about Cloth Paper Scissors magazine, which offers even more instruction and inspiration for collage and mixed media art.
With warm regards,
Cherie
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