What is Collage Art Anyway? The Best Art Form Where You Can Stick It
“What is collage art?” It’s a question that has been asked for centuries. Collage has been used for centuries by various artists but became quite common in the 20th century by artists claiming found objects as “ready made” and glued them or incorporated them into their artworks.
Collage is an awesome medium because you can do anything with it as long as you can stick it down! You can create drawings using virtually any materials so long as they are glue-friendly or can be incorporated into a new artwork. While collage art may seem simple, making poor collage art is easy to do. So you will need to plan and design your collage art like any other artwork to get the best results.
Get into the habit of collecting pieces of thrown away materials or fabrics or magazines.
Even foil, bus tickets (where they still get issued), vintage photographs, wrappers, branded boxes, strong papers and boards, bags and popular product packaging. The list is endless.
This will allow you to build up a readily accessible supply of materials with hot glue guns, PVA Wood glue and other types of adhesives for when you want to incorporate collage into your artworks.
I would often glue my magazine images with acrylic paint mixed with PVA wood glue as a medium. Worked wonders.
When you combine these materials with traditional art materials for painting or drawing then you have a powerful supply of ready made art waiting to be put together by an artistic eye.
What is Collage Art anyway?
Collage is a marvellous medium to use for drawings because the effects it produces can often be unexpected and quite unusual.
All you need to do is use “found” objects or images or text that you will use in place of traditional mediums for painting or drawing to make up an artistic image or to help supplement an artwork.
You can create complete artworks using only cut out and stuck pieces of paper or cardboard or you can add photos or images or cut out pages from a book or magazine to give your artwork that extra talking point.
How do you describe a collage?
People often describe collage as a form of art that is created by sticking objects such as ribbons, paper, clippings, other artworks, photographs, drawings etc together to produce an image or picture.
It can be used in drawing and painting or photography, too.
Types of Collages:
There are many different types of collage such as watercolor/acrylics on paper, applied with glue onto surfaces like wood board for example. It can also involve the use of rubbers/erasers to create interesting textures when glued down onto paper base material.
Some artists will paint their designs using oil paints instead then stick them into place afterwards once they have dried off after being painted beforehand in another session altogether laying out what you want your finished design to look like before actually beginning work . The possibilities are endless.
Are collages fine art?
If you are wondering what type of art is collage art, it might lead to the question of whether or not what type of work fine art or low art? This can be a very subjective matter.
High art is what is popularly considered as what experts in the field of art would consider to be great works.
In fine art, paintings are normally what you will find for sale at museums and galleries or can even visit on a day out from their current exhibitions which change from time to time with new pieces being displayed each month .
You could say that collage work has not historically been seen as high art because it is an area where anyone who loves creating things using paint materials will produce some amazing artwork so this makes them very collectable by any artist no matter what level they might be working towards developing their skills further every step of the way along their journey becoming more skilled over time too just like anything else practice makes perfect after all. Some people even go so far as claiming collage is simply glorified scrapbooking!
Why do artists use collage?
The capacity to include commentary through recognizable images and things is one of the many advantages of collage. It contributes to the depth of the pieces and may help make a point. This is quite popular and common in contemporary art.
I have also used collage in my art as a way to save time or as a workaround to when I have struggled to achieve the desired effect of is in my mind in the real world.
Famous Collage Artists
Collage has long been used as an art form and some of the most popular collage artists include Max Ernst, Kurt Schwitters, Robert Rauschenberg, Ray Johnson (whose portraits inspired me many years ago) and Joseph Cornell. We also have likes of Picasso, Man Ray and Henri Matisse.
In the contemporary art scene here are 5 of the contemporary collage artists to look for.
How to make a Collage Art Piece?
You will probably remember that collage is one of the first types of art you will have explored as a child after paint on paper and crayons on paper. I clearly remember my school teacher giving us all a tub full of magazine pages, materials, scissors, glue and paint and shown how to create cool pictures using what we now know as collage.
The concept is very basic and easy to do.
There are several different approaches you can take when making your first collage piece:
– Use found objects like old photographs or postcards that already have images on them instead of starting from scratch. It’s also good because it helps if you don’t want to cut up magazines yourself.
– Start with drawing what you would like to do then use that as reference for later steps in creating the final artwork which might consist of cutting out pictures etc.
– Use what’s around the house to create your collage like old books or expired film negatives. You can also use magazine pages, wrapping paper, even cereal boxes. Whatever you have lying around that is not valuable and has an image on it could be used for this art form so get creative!
If possible try sticking down several layers of different sorts of materials onto a support which will give greater depth to what you are doing than using just one type of material in combination with another medium such as paint etc.
This makes what you’re creating more interesting visually because there are contrasting textures rather than all being pleasant to touch. It looks good too if some parts protrude slightly while others recede into the background showing perspective off. Try experimenting. You can’t go wrong with collage art.
Is it legal to make Collage art?
The thought may never had crossed your mind before but in short, yes it is legal to make collage art but there are lots of caveats around what makes collage art legal or illegal. I have gone into a bit more depth in this post.
Bonus How to make collage art video
In this video Mark Vazquez-Mackay takes us through his process of making a collage art work. It’s quite fascinating and he does drop some knowledge bombs in this video.
What is collage art anyway? – Wrap up!
When you asked what is collage art? Collage art is a great medium that can be used in many ways to produce all sorts of interesting art.
I hope you enjoyed this post. Please fee free to share it and ask any questions via the Contact Us page or via Instagram.
Sources
Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash
Joseph Colella is a frustrated artist with over 40 years experience making art (who moonlights as a certified Business Analyst with over 20 years of experience in tech). While he holds a Diploma in Information Technology, in true wasted talent style he spent years trying to get into various Art degrees from the Accademia di Belle Arti (Napoli), and failed to get into the Bachelor of Arts (Fine Arts) at the University of Western Sydney. His goal is to attend the Julian Ashton School of Art at The Rocks Sydney when he retires from full time work. In his spare time, he writes for the this blog, WastedTalentInc, where he shares practical advice on art, making art, and art materials. Joseph’s art has been sold to collectors all over the world from the USA, Europe and Australasia. He is a trusted source for reliable art and copyright/fair use advice and is committed to helping his readers make informed decisions about making them a better artist.
He also loves all things watches (ok it’s an addiction) so show him some love and visit his other website https://expertdivewatch.com
