Shape Collage!

Hello! today’s project is super simple but can be expanded and transformed into anything you like! Collage is an art technique that almost everyone has used at some point. It lends itself to so many possibilities and can be created with just about any materials you have on hand.

As always you can see the full video project at Art Out of Anything on Facebook  and Instagram. Brand new project videos on Tuesday and Thursday every week.

For today’s project I chose the following supplies –

• Paper – all kinds to tear up like magazines, construction paper, tissue paper, copy paper etc.
• Glue stick
• Pencil and/or marker
• Scissor
• Paper to draw my shape on and as the canvas for your collage

STEPS – 

• Choose shape you would like to fill. I chose a heart but also drew a silhouette of a cat. You can also use coloring book pages or print out coloring pages or line drawings and use those as your  shape guide.
• Tear the collage paper into small pieces to fit your shape. Optional – you can also cut your paper into pieces with scissors. Tearing is also a really good fine motor skill to practice.
• Start gluing your pieces to the inside of your shape as if you were coloring. You can overlap pieces or place them next to each other. You can also leave space in between pieces. Try all different ways to fill in your shape.

Once completed, add one coat of glue to the entire surface of your collage to glue down any loose edges. Here is my completed heart shape collage which I glued onto a page from a magazine, cut around it, then glued onto another full magazine page to make a border. The red page was a perfume ad so the heart smells pretty too!

Of course you can also come up with your own theme for a collage! Here are some examples of collages my students made that describe their favorite place –

You can also make a collage using only shades of the same color, only faces and more. Challenge yourself to create a collage landscape using only pictures, like they did in the examples above of their favorite place. What picture do you think they used to represent the sand? Hint – it’s an advertisement for flooring.

Picasso and Braque were the first to use collage they way we recognize it,  in their work. Here’s a link to a fantastic article, with photos of amazing collage work by famous artists  My Modern Met – Collage Art

This is a digital shape collage maker that uses your own photos – Shape Collage download

It’s also an app for Android and IPhones.

Collage is an art form that I use in my personal work all the time. I even make collage jewelry with scraps of anything I have on hand  –

I hope you find wild and wonderful things to make collages of!

Please contact patty @eljaiekart@gmail.com for remote learning workshops and professional development bookings.

Thanks for visiting and keep creating,

Patty