The Art of Collage: Cut, Play, Create
Course Overview
Come and join us for four weeks of playful creativity and discover the possibilities of collage.
Using magazines, coloured and painted papers, text and vintage materials, you’ll explore how unexpected images, shapes, colours and textures can be combined to create something entirely new. Along the way, you’ll learn how composition, scale and contrast can transform a simple arrangement of paper into a striking and expressive artwork.
Each week introduces a different approach to collage, from playful image selection and layering to experimenting with proportion, surreal combinations and bold contrasts. You’ll have plenty of opportunity to explore your own ideas, develop your personal style and create a small collection of finished works.
Guided by an experienced collage artist and creative workshop facilitator, the course offers a relaxed, encouraging and informal environment where experimentation is part of the process.
This beginner-friendly course is suitable for everyone, with no previous art or collage experience required. Simply bring your curiosity, a collection of papers and magazines that inspire you, and a willingness to cut, play and create.
The course also celebrates creative reuse, incorporating vintage and discarded papers that might otherwise have gone to waste, making collage a wonderfully accessible and sustainable way to make art.
Course Breakdown
Week 1 – Introduction to Collage
Explore the possibilities of collage through playful image selection and experimentation. Using magazines, painted papers and text, you’ll begin combining different elements and discovering how images can take on new meanings when placed together.
Week 2 – Background, Foreground and Subject
Learn how to build a composition by combining different images into one unified artwork. You’ll experiment with creating a background, introducing a foreground and adding a central subject to bring the collage together.
Week 3 – Scale Reversal
Play with proportion by pairing large and small elements in unexpected ways. Exaggerating differences in scale can create surreal, dramatic or humorous effects and help draw attention to a focal point.
Week 4 – Contrast
Explore how contrast can make key elements stand out within a collage. Using shapes cut from coloured papers, you’ll experiment with bold combinations of colour and form, taking inspiration from the cut-paper works of Henri Matisse.
Outcomes
By the end of the course, participants will have:
- Experimented with a variety of paper-based materials, including magazines, text, vintage papers and decorative papers.
- Developed an understanding of composition, scale, contrast and visual balance.
- Explored techniques for layering, editing, embellishing and refining a collage.
- Created a small collection of distinctive finished artworks.
- Gained greater confidence in experimenting with their own ideas and creative instincts.
- Developed an appreciation for creative reuse and sustainable art-making through the use of repurposed and discarded materials.
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Fiona Fitzpatrick
Fiona began exploring collage several years ago as a simple way to make art regularly, with almost no clean-up! She was quickly drawn to its playful possibilities and the freedom of combining unexpected images and ideas.
An experienced art workshop facilitator, Fiona enjoys helping beginners move beyond the blank page, experiment without pressure and discover their own creative style. She believes making art is even more fun when it is shared with others in a warm, encouraging environment.
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