Collages with torn paper

All you really need are some pictures, something to use as glue, and something to support your collage, like a piece of paper.

More details:

For pictures, words & phrases

Some of the best resources are magazines, newspapers, printed materials, and junk mail.

I especially like fashion, travel and nature magazines for photos. "W" magazine is great for huge, almost surreal images, as well as great words & phrases. "Town & Country" magazine offers a nice mix of fashion, travel, home & garden photos, as well as yummy ads.

If I'm going to sell the finished work, I'm careful about using magazines such as National Geographic. Though their pictures are gorgeous, they have a reputation for being difficult about copyright issues.

However, for personal use, National Geographic can be a treasure trove of wonderful colors and images. Many public libraries have stacks of them on sale for about a 25 cents.

For words and phrases, I like health, fitness, religious and New Age magazines, as well as junk mail -- including the envelopes, which are often better than whatever's enclosed in it.

I find free magazines at public libraries and sometimes at laundromats (ask if they're ready to get rid of some of them).

Adhesives and glues

For now, I'm using Golden Gel Medium (Soft Gel - gloss) with a sponge brush. However, I want to try other kinds of glues and mediums. Golden works fine, but I'm not thrilled with how they run the company, and I suspect that other, less expensive gel mediums work just as well.

When I use a sponge brush, I rinse it out completely as soon as I'm finished with it. I can usually use the same sponge brush for a week before it starts to fall apart.

When I'm applying the gel medium, I use an old phone book underneath my work.

Support for the collage

Anything can support your collage. I generally use a regular spiral-bound sketchbook for my daily collages. However, for this one, I used a file folder. I'm not sure why; it seemed like the right choice.

You could use poster board, canvas, wood, or almost any surface that will accept glue.

(Some dishes or tiles work well with collages, but others don't. Test different materials and adhesives to see what works for you.)

Embellishments

I like gold leaf and glitter, but that's a personal preference. Almost anything that you can glue to a surface can be used as an embellishment.

Go quickly through your materials, and - without much thought - choose images, words & phrases that appeal to you. Tear out the entire page and set it aside.

Even if you're only using part of a picture, tear out the whole page. Often, I discover that I need additional parts of the picture -- especially its background -- to "frame" the image to the full width of the collage.

Tip: If you like more than one element on a page, separate them. Otherwise, it's easy to forget that you were going to use more than one item from a single page.

I often select a word or phrase early in this process. In one collage, I chose "Uncompromised" quickly, from a fashion magazine. The word "promise" is in red in it, and I realized (light bulb realization) that when I compromise, I'm breaking a promise to myself or to others. Even if it's just small and unspoken, it's still a betrayal (big or little) of an ideal that I held or aspired to.

That's a concept worth examining, as I work on daily priorities. (Those are the kinds of insights I get from art journaling.)

Remember, you can use a word or phrase from a sentence. I chose the useful phrase "you deserve" from a laxative ad!

When you feel pleased with your collection of pages, or when you have a stack of about ten pages, pause and begin working with them.

This is a two-part process. First, tear the images in the approximate size. Then, tear it to the exact size.

If a page is really large, it can be more difficult to tear out the precise element that I want. So, I tear the page around the general area of the element, and then tear more exactly.

When I'm making the final tear, I try to tear it all in one go, not inching along a little at a time. A smooth tear usually looks nicer, unless you have a specific reason for a very jagged edge.

Also, when you tear the magazine page, there will be a white edge in one direction of the tear. (See the yellow arrow. It points to the white edge.) Try it and see for yourself. I like to work with either all white-edged images, or keep all of my images without white edges.

This is going to be a little messy -- or even a lot messy. Revel in it!

With something underneath the image - so you can smear or practically lather the gel medium (or whatever glue) - apply the adhesive to the back of the image.

If the adhesive is too thick, it can be lumpy underneath the image. If the adhesive is applied in a really thin layer, it can dry too quickly. However, as long as some of it sticks to the collage, that can be enough.

If you're using gel medium, remember that it sort of melts with extreme heat.

You can use an iron (there are special irons made for this, too) - with some sort of release paper between the collage and the iron, so the iron doesn't get all gooey from the melting medium - and the heat softens & reactivates the gel.

So, even dried gel medium can be reactivated and it'll suddenly adhere the entire image to whatever's underneath it.

I only do this when the collage is nearly completed - before I apply any glitter or gold leaf - if there's clearly a problem where part of the collage didn't adhere correctly.

Keep in mind that your lower layers (and at least some of their edges) will be covered by later additions to the collage.

Now it's time to place the first image or collage element where you want it to be, in your collage. (In the photo, the red arrow points to my first piece in this collage.)

Try to place it exactly where you want it to be, or at least fairly close. If you lift, stretch, or drag a piece of magazine paper, it can stretch and look a little odd in your final work.

If your collage element seems to bubble, it's okay to pat it flat, but don't try to smooth it. (I learned that from collage artist Claudine Hellmuth.)

If you brush it or rub it with your fingers to smooth it, it'll stretch the paper and the finished result might be disappointing.

Bubbled paper seems to shrink back to shape was the adhesive dries, or at least some papers will do that. So, if you're going to put something over the bubbled piece, let the bubbled part dry, first. It might flatten out on its own.

Keep working. Build up more layers. Tear more images as you work, if you need more images

I usually tear out the first three or four images that I'm going to work with, and then start building the collage.

When I'm happy with them, or if I decide to add another image that I haven't torn out yet, I pause and tear out what I'll need next.

If I have a massive pile of torn paper - good stuff and paper that I may (or may not) use - it can become confusing.

Continue to build your collage.

Remember that the first layers are the background. As you add layers, they'll be on top. (It's amazingly easy to forget this, sometimes.)

The focal point (or points) of your collage should probably be on top. The leading areas tend to attract the attention of the viewer.

However, it's okay to tuck little surprises in the lower layers, for the viewer to "discover" as he or she explores the collage.

Also, don't despair if your collage looks messy. Some will be more messy than others. It's okay.

Here's what you need to know if you make a "mistake." (That's in quotation marks because mistakes can often be moments of serendipity, slightly disguised.)

1. Milky areas will probably dry clear. The white blobs beneath the letters TH (in the word "think") dried so they were pretty much invisible.

2. If the paper looks translucent in some areas, they'll probably turn opaque when the adhesive dries. The white paper over the letter T in "think" dried completely opaque.

3. Anything that looks weird when the collage is nearly finished, can be covered with embellishments (glitter, gold leaf, threads, pieces of mica, paint, etc.) or you can cover it with another image or phrase. I used glitter and gold leaf to direct attention away from the scratches in the brown area to the left of the word "think."

For this collage, I'd selected a great image of a model looking in one direction.

However, I discovered an even better photo on the back of it: Mulawi children in colorful, traditional clothing.

The photo of the children took this collage from ho-hum to wow!

So, allow for serendipity as you work.

Keep building your collage until you're happy with it

It's okay to take your time. It's also okay to rush through this in a flurry of creativity.

You can start the collage, walk away from it, and finish it later in the day, or the next day, or the next week!

Tip: When you think to yourself, "I think this is nearly finished," it's probably finished.

Stop! Take a break, and then take a fresh look at it.

It's better to stop too early than take the work too far.

I love embellishments, but you don't have to add any at all. Every artist has his or her own style.

Embellishments can include things like:

* Glitter, tinsel, gold leaf (or copper leaf, etc.), feathers, or ribbon.
* Tissue paper (it may remain translucent if you use gel medium over and underneath that layer).
* Thread, glued on or stitched on.
* Beads, mica, sand, pieces of glass.
* Paint, oil pastels, stencils, rubber stamp art.

You can even embed something that plays a tune or says something (like in greeting cards) in your collage, for people to press.

The possibilities are unlimited.

After the collage is fully dry, you can seal it with a thin coat of gel medium. It's not necessary, but it will give the collage a uniform level of gloss (or a uniformly matte finish, if you used a matte gel medium).

This will also protect the collage from dust and damage, if you want to leave it "as is" instead of displaying it under glass.

Tip: If you're using this in an artist's journal - such as a spiral-bound sketchpad - place a piece of wax paper between the collage and the facing page. That will prevent the pages from sticking together if the journal is stored where the heat might soften the gel medium.

Though I could probably explain all of the elements, it's true that "a picture is worth a thousand words." So, my actual collage is shown on the right.

Basically, this is about re-evaluating compromises -- things that I decided were okay, short-term, as a step to a more important goal. For me, it's easy to let those to become long-term, semi-invisible issues.

This is the kind of realization that occurs when I work intuitively on these collages. Sometimes the meaning is evident, right away. At other times, I don't see the deeper meanings for hours or even days after the work is completed.

The image of the happy children in colorful clothing is important to me. It's how joyous and self-expressive we all can be.

And yes, we all deserve to live deliciously, savoring every moment!

New collage artists sometimes have copyright questions. I'm not an attorney, so I can't give you a solid, legal answer. The following are my opinions, and the guidelines I generally follow with my own work.

For work that I'm creating for personal use only, I use whatever I have on hand. That's about 99% of my collage art; I generally don't sell my collages. They're deeply personal.

If I'm thinking of selling my original collages, or reproducing them in a book or a magazine article, it's a little different.

Generally, I recommend thinking of commercial images the same as you might think of working with fabric you buy by-the-yard at the fabric store.

You can sew clothing for your own use. In some cases, you can create and sell items made from the fabric.

However, you can't reproduce the fabric, claim it's your own design, or anything like that.

Here's another example: Let's say you've bought a book. When you're finished with it, you can sell the book on eBay or in the used section at Amazon.com, etc. However, you can't copy the entire book and sell copies of it. You can't publish the book yourself and pretend that you wrote it, either. In some cases, you can quote passages from the book for review or editorial purposes, but that's on a case-by-case basis.

So, no matter how cool your collage is, you might run into trouble if you want to sell reproductions of your collage, without getting permission from the original copyright owners of each element in the work.

A lot can depend on how important any one element is in the work. If you've seen books of collage art, such as "Spilling Open," the individual collage elements in each collage (of many in the book) represent a tiny fraction of the value of the book.

In addition, if one were to measure the size of the individual element and contrast that with the square feet of page surface in the book... well, the collage element would look very small.

For more in-depth discussions about copyright and art, see two of my related articles, Copyright and the 'Three Stroke' Rule, and Copyright and Art.

However, if you have serious questions about using copyrighted images in work you're planning to reproduce and/or sell, consult an attorney. In the U.S., the laws aren't very clear, and history has shown that they're applied differently in different locales, time periods, and in relation to different kinds of art.