How I Got Started Making Collages

When I first came to Germany after my university studies, life was rather dull; I didn’t know anyone; didn’t speak the language; it was wintertime; English books were exorbitantly expensive; and, I just had a lot of spare time on my hands. So, what I did was keep my hands busy by making collages. Some of the collages were on paper, but others were glued and lacquered on plain wooden boxes I bought at a craft shop.

I’d listen to some mixed music tapes my brother made up for me before leaving Canada and I cut and drew and glued and lacquered the evenings and weekends away. Eventually, life got busy. I made friends. I leant to speak (cough) German. I started travelling (I heart the DeutscheBahn) around Germany and Europe every spare moment of my time. The only loss that I suffered at this stage, was my inspiration to make collages. No one, least of all me, noticed.

Jump ahead about fifteen or twenty years… I have the feeling of being brain dead when it comes to being creative. Having kids can do that to some of us. We invest so much of our love and energy into our children that quiet contemplative creative work falls by the wayside.

I was complaining about this fact to a colleague of mine one morning. She asked me what was the last artsy thing that I had done that was I’d had fun doing. I mentioned the collages and she told me to start there. So, off I went to our local bookstore and bought a whole pile of picture books that were on sale.

I really got a charge out of cutting and gluing again. It was a delight, though I was not always happy with the results because either my scissors were not sharp or my hands not as steady and some of the lines were tattered. My colleague friend suggested that I scan the collages into my computer and improve them with Photoshop. I’d worked with Photoshop a long time before this time and thought a bit of cosmetic surgery to my collages would be fun.

One day, my colleague asked me why I didn’t do all the collage work with Photoshop. I was aghast at this suggestion. She obviously didn’t realise (she’s a graphic designer) how fundamentally important the physical process is to some folk for creating art. Thus ensued a half-hour lecture, on my part, about how I would never receive the same pleasure in making collages with Photoshop as with paper and scissors.

To be continued…

The Right Setting

An integral part for making collages is creating a setting or work atmosphere to make them in. I am going to describe the time and place of my collage making.

I nearly always work in our living room/dinning room on our dinning room table, which is actually a kitchen table, since we do not have a big enough kitchen to have a table in. So, our living room is a multipurpose room. It is also the centre of activity.

It is where the telephone rings, where my husband sits and plays WoW, where friends and family while when they drop by for a chat and a cup of tea.

I place my laptop at the far end of our dinning table, looking into the room. And thus I am witness to all the coming-and-goings of the household: not the overseer, just the quiet observer. I find this soothing and congruous to creative work.

Sometimes, I think that I really only started making collages so that I could listen to my wide selection of podcasts. After living in Germany for over twenty years, I discovered I was starved for audio input. And after my father died, I sort of stopped listening to music. I just think that it is also hard to listen to music in a four-persone household. I’ve never been much of a background music person. Either I’m listening to the music, or I am working in silence.

When DSL came alone, this changed. I love listening to people talk. There is so much intelligent, funny, quirky, interesting stuff out there. I can’t seem to get enough of it.

Yet, I don’t have the inner peace, just to sit and listen, so that is where creating collages come in. There is such a harmony between listening and the rather meditative motions of working with Photoshop.

There is a certain physicality to working with the Photoshop that is difficult to explain. I do not use the program tools as much as just dip-and-dab with many of the art filters, copy and paste functions, and eraser functions. It will be interesting to see if I can get you guys to explore or discover your inner collage creator, given that my technical skills are very limited.

Suggestion: When working on collages, be careful not to crowd your senses with too much multiple input. Since collage making is very visual, you should keep the visual input in your room simple. For this reason, I would suggest no television or other visual distractions.

Homework: Take a few minutes and reflect upon what sort of work atmosphere do you think you is most conducive for making collages.

Please leave a comment with this post with either a list of words or a descriptive paragraph of the workspace you envision. What I would specifically like to know is, whether this workspace of yours has music, or audio books, or radio, or podcasts playing? If so, what is your preference?

First Questions To Ask, First Task To Do

What sort of collages do you want to make? Do you want to blend old photos with new? Do you want to do a series (e.g. of boating, yoga)? Would you rather just decide on the theme spontaneously, according to your mood?

The first task is to build up a small collection of photos you want to use over the next months. Separate them into folders (e.g., backgrounds, patterns, nature, objects, misc). You can either take your own photos or download copyright-free stuff. There are a lot of great sites with copyright free photos.

My favourites:

stock.xchng (you have to set up an account, then you can download up to 100 photos/day for free)

or,

Go to phototree* (set up an account) and click on a photo you like.

Check in Flickr (set up an account) whether the photo is copyright free.

Example, Arches arching over, by yewenyi

Click on the “zoom to all sizes” symbol and then you see the copyright restrictions. In this case, no commercial gain. So, you can use it.

*Note: give phototree a chance to discover you taste. I found that the first one or two times I was bombarded with naked ladies and perky tits. It was annoying. A hundred photos or more later, the intelligent search machine doesn’t bother any more.

That is your lesson until I return from vacation.

If anyone wants to join in making collages, please leave a comment and any questions you wish. Or, you can email me directly at virtualredtent at yahoo DOT com.

Homework #1: set up a photo library to choose from and then choose your first theme.

Suggestion #1: slowly make up a collection of photographers you like on Flickr who publish copyright-free photos.