Mixed Media Planet – Mixed media creativity for everyone

It’s wonderful to work intuitively with your collage. It’s also good to know and understand a few underlying composition principles that you’re probably using without realising. These composition principles often bring balance and a naturally pleasing aesthetic to art. I thought it would be interesting and useful to share them here. Of course, these design principles are by no means “rules” or guidelines that “must” be followed. I’m sharing them because I think it’s fascinating to understand how our eyes and mind work in response to a visual creation. I’m not a professionally trained artist, I’m just self-taught, but wanted to share some of what I have learned on my journey with you, too. I hope that you have fun getting creative and experimenting with some of these ideas in your own collage, especially ones that you might not have considered or used before. I’ve experimented with them myself, as it’s a great way to expand my creativity and get out of my comfort zone, which I always think is a healthy and stimulating thing to do. I’ve shared my results – successes and failures! – here for you to see. Composition Composition in art simply means how objects, elements or shapes are arranged in their visual space. The composition is how a number of techniques all work together to draw the viewer into the work and communicate the artist’s point of view. Your focal point and the rule of thirds A focal point is a main point of interest that anchors the collage. Experiment with creating a strong focal point in your collage. This comes from thinking through the ‘story’ that you want to tell, and the most important things that you want the viewer to see and think about. A strong pop of accent color can really make your focal point stand out. The rule of thirds is used by all kinds of artists to achieve an effective composition by making sure that the focal point is not directly in the center of the work. Often, a focal point which is right in the middle of a collage isn’t as appealing to the eye because it cuts the work in two and can seem unnatural, but there are exceptions to this “rule” of course. By using a real or imagined nine-box grid over the space of your collage you could experiment with placing your focal point where the lines intersect each other, like the example here. You could also get super-fancy and use the golden ratio, a Greek mathematical equation that is depicted as a spiral. Many of history’s most celebrated artworks use the golden ratio to create a sense of balance, and because it’s also seen all around us in nature and our architecture we often use and recognise it intuitively. Greek mathematicians, after repeatedly seeing similar proportions in nature and geometry, developed a mathematical formula for the ideal rectangle, with sides at a 1:1.62 ratio. Even now books and bank cards align to the golden ratio! Guide the viewer’s eye You can create a rhythm and harmony to your work by repeating selected elements in your piece, drawing the eye through your work and taking the viewer on a journey. You may choose to put emphasis on selected parts of your collage, making them stand out in some way. Using gradation helps you to connect different parts of your collage piece. For example, moving from darker to lighter tones of the same color; from big shapes to small shapes; from thick lines to thinner lines. Your use of proportion will create a sense of nearness or distance through sizing of different elements in your collage. Leading lines such as wires, roads, fences, curves, repeated shapes to direct the viewer around your collage. You could play around with using zigzags, S-curves, J-curves, diagonals, spirals, steps or stairways, edges and circles. Simplification Simplification can be a really effective way to enhance the effectiveness of your collage composition. It’s great fun to be intuitive and maximalist at times and create a wonderful riot of colors and shapes. Sometimes, though, it can be super relaxing and de-stressing to declutter, pare things back a little and keep them simple. Simplification helps to shape a sense of overall unity within your collage. Here are some ways that you might really enjoy experimenting with simplifying your collage art. Select a limited range of colors and stick to the color palette that you have chosen.Edit out some of the detail in less important areas. Also only include key elements, omitting a few things you might ordinarily include.Reduce the levels of contrast between the darkest and lightest shades and tones.Only use larger pieces of paper to reduce the detail in your collage. Use odd numbers When you’re repeating a particular visual element in your collage, using an odd number usually looks more natural and less formal than an even number. Play with triangles You can arrange different features in your collage so that they give a sense of balance and stability. Earlier we explored how odd numbers seem to be more visually pleasing than even ones. Related to that concept is the idea that placing elements in the structure of a triangle creates a positive effect. Two eyes and a mouth create a triangle, for example. The reason is that we often visually associate triangles with balance and stability. Texture Look for different paper, card or fabric textures to add to your collage composition. Create contrast. movement and depth by varying the types of paper, card or fabric that your use. Tearing the paper towards the paper gives a slightly textured edge too. Ripping the paper towards the front creates even more texture. For contrast, clean, sharp edges can be created using scissors or a craft knife. All-over composition – also called the equalization effect The classical composition principles that I’ve covered so far in this article can be thrown out of the window of course if you’re into more abstract collage art. Jackson Pollack, although not a collage artist, worked over the canvas in a uniform way, and this is something you could try too in your own collage art. It’s often referred to as all-over composition, or the equalization effect. Rules are made to be broken Collage art is fun and rules are made to be broken. I’m not recommending for one second that we should follow any of these rules, ever, if we don’t want to. We should collage exactly as we want to. I simply thought that it would be good to share them though as you might want to experiment and play with some of them. I’m always up for trying new things and expanding my own creativity and see these as some interesting prompts I can use to learn and experience a few new things. I’d love to know if you already use any of these, or if you decide to experiment with any, how you get on. Please do comment. In the meantime, for more collage in action, I’d love to connect over on my Instagram account @bigbang_mixedmedia and on my Intuitive Collage Youtube channel. Hope to see you there!

Recent Posts