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I've been making collages lately as a means to get back into my old visual arts groove and they're fun; so lets make, post, look at, and talk about collages! First, some quick and dirty historical proof that they do technically count as fine art and weren't always the bailiwick of grade school art teachers who'd run out of ideas. Still Life with Chair Caning, Pablo Picasso, 1912  Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada Through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany, Hannah Hoch, 1919–1920  Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?, Richard Hamilton, 1956 I had longer write ups on these but the long and the short of it is that Picasso (and I guess George Braques too) invented the idea of incorporating ready made materials into their paintings, Hannah Hoch did pioneering work using collage as an art medium during Dadaism, and Richard Hamilton's collage is here because although it's not the first work of Pop Art, it is the one cited as having established what the whole movement was about and is quite iconic as a result. I wish I had examples of contemporary collage artists to put in this spot, but I'm not that plugged into the world of art anymore or even what's hot on the art side of the internet. So any suggestions are welcome! I can at least put a local artist's instagram here. I like her stuff but have yet to go see it in person. Now on to my Old poo poo:    New poo poo (as in within the past year):   Currently working on poo poo:  As you can see I've been exploring mandalas/symmetry/geometry lately for the hell of it: it fits neatly into my liking to arrange stuff. And I've also been making some things at trading card size because I really like the idea of art trading cards and have half baked plans regarding them. Right now my goal is towards actually finishing art projects and I've been striving to hold to the adage that a imperfect finished piece is more important than a perfect unfinished piece. Finish it, learn from your mistakes, and move on to the next. So I am aware that the center cards didn't line up nicely on the one I'm currently working on, and I think I know why it happened, but I'm almost done anyways so oh well. I'll try to do better next time. Making collages is doing wonders for getting my creative juices flowing, probably because it plays to my one strength of needing constraints when I set out to make art. Things always seem to work better when I have a "rule" to follow. So go dig out your scissors and glue and make a collage! Or open Photoshop and do it digitally I don't care, 
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Nov 25, 2021 04:33
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 22:08 |
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these are very cool!
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Nov 25, 2021 04:58
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sebmojo posted:these are very cool! Thanks! I'm never sure if they're as cool as I think they are.
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Nov 25, 2021 05:13
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This makes me want to do collage! I've been thinking about introducing it as an activity with my clients. I really like how tidy your style is.
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Nov 25, 2021 20:59
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Sitting Here posted:This makes me want to do collage! I've been thinking about introducing it as an activity with my clients. I really like how tidy your style is. Do it! I want to see everybody's cool collages! This is just as much low budget art therapy for me as anything else. And thanks for the compliment! I did finish the large black and white piece posted earlier but until I stop being lazy about digging out a camera/lights, have a TCG sized exploration in what to do with a stack of Pokemon energy cards. 
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Nov 26, 2021 21:23
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Still haven't photographed the big black and white one yet, but I at least got to tearing up an old calendar with Indian art last night:
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Dec 17, 2021 20:58
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I love that. I could absolutely see an entire calendar done in that style (your style, i mean, not the style of the original calendar). I'm going to commit to making some sort of collage before the end of the year!! I'm gonna do it!
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Dec 19, 2021 22:59
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Sitting Here posted:I love that. I could absolutely see an entire calendar done in that style (your style, i mean, not the style of the original calendar). Thanks. And I believe in you! Oh man an entire calendar though... I'll admit my dirty little go to cheat for subjects/ideas is that fortune cookie paper slip in the upper left. I've hoarded a bunch over the years and you get some weird ones once in a while that just beg to be illustrated in some manner. And here, have a pin I put together out of the stuff too.  Not everything turns out a winner though. I made this TCG sized background out of the Indian art scraps but kinda at a loss of what to stick in as the subject. Maybe I'll cut out the vase from another one and slap it on there and pretend it has some deep meaning? 
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Dec 19, 2021 23:41
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Hello again! I have actually been working on collages and being bad at posting in this thread. Here's the end/beginning of the year round up. First off more trading card sized stuff:   Here's two random pins in progress. I've got to finish out the backs and I've been sealing both pins and some cards with acrylic varnish. I am wholly expecting the red paper to bleed like hell on these when I do this.   And finally I've started another big one using the backs of playing cards. It's going to take me longer than expected to do. 
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Jan 20, 2022 05:01
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I am going to attempt tp revive the thread through the power of cats.  I have been busy making stuff, to the point that I may actually need to go out and buy an old book or something to get more collage materials: it feels like I'm beginning to scrape the bottom of the barrel of what I have left!
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Feb 26, 2022 06:05
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I made a collage today!! ...but I forgot to take a pic, and it's at work. Posting in this thread to remind myself to post it when I go back this week!
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Mar 14, 2022 09:16
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Ooooo, can't wait! This week is a busy week for me, so I don't know when I'll get to posting mine either. I think I've decided which ones I'm going to send off to the local art gallery's charity show for the hell of it at any rate. In more boring news I had a little time and was in the area of a few thrift stores so I'd thought I'd stop and see if there was a cheap coffee table book to slice up but by god the selection was dire and there was hardly any there. I wound up nabbing some book about cat breeds that originally came from the B&N bargain bin, maybe I'll give one of the cats laser eyes or something. It's so weird to actually have to start seeking scraps again: I've got stuff that I can cobble together for backgrounds, but no really interesting subjects or focal points to structure a piece around.
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Mar 15, 2022 03:41
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I like your idea of using fortune cookies to give you ideas. My best friend has been trying to get me to do some collages, but my biggest artistic block in general is that I can never think of any ideas of what to make. I feel like without some kind of prompt any collage attempt I'd make would just be a display of interesting pictures from magazine. Do you, or anyone else here, have any other interesting ways to find inspiration for stuff like this?
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Mar 19, 2022 17:34
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pseudorandom posted:I like your idea of using fortune cookies to give you ideas. My best friend has been trying to get me to do some collages, but my biggest artistic block in general is that I can never think of any ideas of what to make. I feel like without some kind of prompt any collage attempt I'd make would just be a display of interesting pictures from magazine. Let's see if I can give advice with out getting too preachy though it'll wind up being tl;dr anyways. And you're most of the way there, you recognized the need for a prompt! It took me a long rear end time to realize that I work best with rules and constraints, and that I would have to set these myself because I had finished art school and no longer had professors giving me assignments to do. It's that whole irritation produces pearls thing, and collages are great for that because they come with the built in constraint of a set group of images to rearrange and juxtapose as you see fit. So to try and keep this somewhat coherent here's some general all encompassing things I do inspiration wise in addition to collage specific ones: Look at other's art/go to art museums. Something there may inspire you to try to so something similar, or if you see a piece you hate you may want to try and do it better yourself. Or if the museum has art from different cultures and time periods from your own you may wish to incorporate some of those design ideas into your own work. Be inspired by the images themselves you gather for collage. Is there a specific picture that you want to incorporate into a piece? It could be as simple as a person/dog/cat with a funny expression and you want to have them reacting to something else in the picture. Or think how you want to present a cool image of an object. Is it to be worshipped, ignored, or used as weapon for instance? Find something cool and build the piece around it. Limit yourself. This works best with card decks of multiples of the same or similar images. Recently I did a piece where I challenged myself to only using the cherub riding a bicycle from the standard rider back playing cards that the United States Playing Card Company has been printing forever. The cherubs are inside a circle and when I started to arrange them it reminded me of flowers like queen anne's lace or hydrangeas that are clustered in round groups. How many ways can you arrange multiples of the same picture of a gem, or a pile of bird pictures? The "obscure reference." Did a picture remind you of a plot point from your favorite book, tv show, or other pop culture thing? Or did it remind you of a personal memory? Illustrate that! This assumes the picture isn't just directly from the established imagery from said pop culture thing but something similar. Like a generic picture of space suddenly reminding you of a random Star Trek episode. Or in my case I saw a picture that reminded me of a storyline in NSFW fantasy comedy webcomic Oglaf. If you do it right no one will know what you're referencing (unless you tell them) and they'll be too busy making their own interpretations anyways. And finally an explanation of the fortune cookies, or really any goofball phrase you encounter. I have always found one word prompts to be near useless in inspiring me. Home, spring, freezing, and dread are all prompt ideas that are too wide open and generic. Even some twoish word ones like face to face aren't quite enough for me, and that's one that came from an actual gallery looking for art to display/sell. Fortune cookies are often weirdly written, whether it's due to odd translation issues or not, and a whole phrase gives me a lot more to chew on and try to interpret. I feel like instruction manual lines out of context could also work like "Removing disc is not recommended" That came from the back of an envelope that held the negatives from disc pak film, one of a billion old dead competing camera film formats. By the way, I have a whole slew of fortune cookie slips as I've compulsively saved them for years and I considered making a thread or something where I just draw one from the bin every week for drawing prompts, but I didn't want to poo poo up CC with too many crap threads. Here's one on the house that's weirdly kinda appropriate for the current conversation:  fake edit: Another idea that just popped into my read was to look up a horoscope. Those are purposefully a bunch of advice words written to be as vague as possible so they can apply to everyone whose is an Aries or whatever. Way open to interpretation by design. Tarot cards too if you wanted to get introspective on your own life at the same time. Easiest reading is to draw three cards with the first representing your past, the second your present, and the third your future. Could be either good things or obstacles to overcome/watch out for, iirc. Could illustrate that situation unless you got some major poo poo going on and its too personal.
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Mar 20, 2022 19:39
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 22:08 |
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 Got busy today and made four collages. Once they dry I can scan 'em for proper posting.
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Apr 10, 2022 02:42
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