Collage art tips to spark your imagination
- Chloe Fenech
- Oct 9
- 7 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
Collage art combines unique materials and traditional techniques to create new ideas. It’s a form of art that is great for storytelling, using many different textures, images and symbols.
In this blog, I share my list of practical tips, techniques and creative strategies for making collage artwork, from choosing your materials to using a blend of techniques. You’ll be able to make vibrant, expressive collage landscapes in no time!
A History of Collage Art
Collage art originated in the early 20th century, though its roots can be traced back to much earlier practices of combining materials such as paper, fabric, and found objects. The word “collage,” is derived from from the French word coller (meaning “to glue”), and was first used by artists of the Cubist movement, including Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. In the early decades of the 1900s they began incorporating newspaper clippings, wallpaper and other materials into their paintings, challenging traditional ideas of composition and representation.
By the mid-20th century, Henri Matisse brought collage to new heights with his famous “cut-outs”: vibrant, large-scale compositions made from painted paper that he cut and arranged into dynamic shapes and figures whilst dealing with major operations and unable to paint in his later years.
His work demonstrated the expressive and painterly potential of collage.
How to Choose Collage Art Materials
In theory, anything relatively thin or flat can be glued or adhered onto a surface, but some of the more commonly used collage materials include papers, fabrics, newspaper, and magazines. Below is a list of just some of the materials you can include in your collage.
Old map print
Clothing patterns
Packaging paper
Fat quarters of fabric
Brochures and leaflets
Old books
Typed or hand written letters
Newspaper and magazines
Shoebox paper
Wrapping paper
Gold leaf
Wallpaper
Tissue paper
Paper bags
Children’s artwork (with their permission)
Stickers
Handwritten notes
Stamps and postage labels
Postcards
Photographs
Leather
Crepe paper
Ticket stubs
Sheet music
Felt
You’ll probably have some of these at home, and others are easy to find - be aware of any packaging you're throwing away, keep an eye on charity shops and look in haberdasheries and paint stores for samples. You’ll always find something new! I keep hold of any interesting scraps that I think could have potential.
The great thing about these materials are that each one has its own unique characteristics and can provide depth and mood to your artwork, and what you collect will also be personal to your tastes. A piece of delicate fabric can create softness, tissue paper can add transparency and depth, a bold, bright piece of wallpaper can catch the eye and support your focal areas.
Personal or found objects like handwritten notes, ticket stubs or newspaper print that aligns with your subject matter can help make your work feel more personal and create a theme.
When using these collage materials with different paint applications - fat, glazed, impasto - everything can fit together beautifully, no matter how random you think your selected materials are. Some parts of the process are cluttered, messy, busy, and you might feel a bit lost, but this is part of the fun of collage. Just keep going! The more layers you add, the more depth you’ll create.
How to Organise Your Collage Scraps
Personal preference here, but I prefer my collage scraps to be torn by hand wherever possible. I like to avoid the overly sharp and “illustrative” quality that scissor cut collage has. But you can use whichever technique you like, or a mix of both.
It helps to organise your materials too, and an obvious way to do this is to sort by colour, so it’ll be easier to find a particular colour later on. A big box is ideal, and one that has plenty of space to add more materials to.
Work with a Limited Collage Palette
One trick that helps me avoid overwhelm when staring at a giant box of scraps is to select a handful of around 10 bits that appeal to me at that time. They don’t have to match, and you don’t need to think about what you're going to use where, yet. But having a more limited selection helps you to focus and create more harmony in your work, in the same way that artists work with a limited palette.
How to Start Making Art With Collage
You’ve got your materials, now the rest is really up to you. This is where collage is more fun and unhindered than painting for me. You don’t need to start with a composition, a sketch or an idea.
You can start simply laying shapes and scraps and see what feels right. Don’t be tempted to glue them down just yet though, enjoy moving them around, playing with different textures, forms and patterns.
Try a completely weird and wonderful scrap in the “wrong” place to see what happens.
How to Layer Collage
To layer or not to layer? Either way it’s important that the layers add to your work instead of distract. Layers should be used to overlap, create contrast and focus in some areas, and perhaps soften up other “quiet” areas of your work.
Think how these layers draw the eye around, play with larger shapes over smaller ones, and avoid being too repetitive with a single size or shape.
Experiment with opaque and transparent layers to see what effects you like best.
What Glue or Adhesive Should I use for Collaging?
For small, non-precious sketchbook studies, a standard glue stick or PVA glue will work just fine. But for longer lasting and more durable works, I recommend using a satin medium or a varnish that provides a more even finish, gives you the adhesion without the stickiness or the smell, and eliminates any bubbling. You can use your fingers or something like a bone fold to make sure your edges are glued nice and flat, and heavy books can be used to secure everything down while it dries.
Pro tip: collaging is not recommended in hot, tropical climates where fans are necessary. You’ll find more collage scraps on the floor than on your painting.
How to Add Texture
When I look at paintings of the old masters or contemporary artists, I love to get up close and see their brushwork, marks and textures. The more I can see, the more I want to keep looking. And collage is no different. There’s an almost sensory experience to creating contours, peaks and smoothness which makes the surface of your collage artwork more dynamic. Create something that encourages the viewer in closer, revealing more hidden layers the more they look.
Sometimes the softness of a square of fabric can contrast beautifully with a glossy piece of paper, or old print can just peek through translucent layers of paint. The rough edges of torn papers against smoother paint layers is an interesting problem for the eyes to solve.
Crafting “Loud” and “Quiet” Areas
Collage paintings can quickly look overwhelming, but the best way I’ve found to balance this is to use “loud” and “quiet” areas, similar to how a painter uses “negative space” or a photographer creates a focal point.
Creating areas of similarity and order can bring “quiet“ to an otherwise very busy subject, and can give the viewers eyes and brain a chance to process the work as a whole. Leave some space around clusters of texture or colour.
Telling a Story with Collage
You can create collage art just for fun, or for the joy of experimenting with a new medium, but you can also use it to tell personal stories or for specific subjects. Using personal materials that have sentimental value to you can help.
Read how I turned my child's artwork into a collage.
Adding hand written notes between lovers, old postcards, lines from poems or relevant newspaper headlines can all help to build up a story or an emotion. It’s your choice whether you want to be more subtle or bold with this method.
Mixed Media Collage Techniques
You can use collage alone, but I prefer to incorporate it into layers of a painting, whether as the base layer or the base plus many subsequent layers.
I’ll often start with a very loose wash of ink or acrylic, before adding some scraps at random until I start to form a composition.
Mixed media can be used at any point in your process, just make sure that your mediums are compatible and won’t leak or run (acrylic paint won‘t layer well over oil pastel, and Inktense blocks will bleed with glue, varnish or paint unless you fix it with a fixative spray first.
Add pencil, charcoal, colored pencil to outline key focal areas or create organic elements.
Pastels can provide bright pops of interest or form.
Use stencils and a sponge to create interesting patterns.
Spread some paint with a palette knife or use a textural medium.
Add salt, sand, glitter, the sky’s the limit.
Final Thoughts
I’m constantly experimenting with collage and trying new techniques. This guide is by no means a complete list, and there’s really no right or wrong way to paint with collage. Just have a go, and see where it leads you.
You can read more about my process on my blog, or browse through my collage collection of “Wild Gardens” which started my love of this versatile art form.
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