Creativity in Collage

Recently I watched a YouTube video of another artist, Rebecca Chapman, make collage papers. I have always had a fascination with papers and watching her create these wonderful colors and marks and then use them on a piece of art was right up my alley. I have tried different times to create collage pieces but always found them lacking. They didn’t really feel like they went well together. Her videos were such an “ah ha” moment! I will link the videos below.

I decided to give it a go her way and wow I loved the process and how they turned out. If you would like a no pressure way to get creative, I would encourage you to give collage a try. Making the papers is a lot of the fun for me. Its relaxing and rewarding! I will share below how I did mine.

First off gather the papers you want to use. I used a mix of plain copy paper, notebook paper, and pages from a book. Any size works and any kind of paper works too.

Then choose 3 colors of paint. To make this work cohesively, choose them from the primary colors of red, blue, and yellow. They don’t have to be straight up red, blue and yellow but colors of that hue. I chose a fluorescent pink, primary cyan, and nickel azo yellow.

You will also want to add white and black. These will help you get even more hues.

This next part is where your creativity gets to go crazy! Start by mixing 2 of the colors together. Then keep going from there. Mix 2 more colors. Add in white, or add in a little black. Mix the 2 mixes together. Keep mixing up different color combinations from those 5 colors. The sky is the limit. If you want to see this in action, watch the video link above. Rebecca does a great job explaining it!

Here’s a pic of how mine turned out.

After painting all the pages. Split them in half. Keep half of the painted pages so they are just solid painted pages. The other half are what you will make marks on. You can use more paint, markers, paint pens, crayons, pencils. Then once again let your creativity go! Watch her video if you would like to see this in action.

Once you have them all made; some solid pages and some with marks. You are all ready to begin your collage. Cut & tear shapes and start gluing them down on a piece of paper. I started with the solids and then built up from there with the marked pages.

Here is an example of my finished collages.