Collage with a Message
Senior 1 · Fine Arts
Collage with a Message
Lesson 2 of 5
25 min
Piet Mondrian, a Dutch painter, became famous for paintings made only of black lines and flat rectangles of red, yellow and blue. They look simple, but he spent weeks deciding where each line and each colour should go. On the study below he did not paint the red and blue rectangles onto the sheet: he cut them from painted paper and stuck them onto a charcoal grid, so he could try them in different places and see how the balance changed. That is exactly how you should plan a collage: move the pieces before you glue them.
Worked example
Reading a planning study: Mondrian, Study for a Composition
Step 1. What you see. Dozens of rubbed-out and redrawn charcoal lines, two red rectangles at the top left, one blue at the right and a thin yellow bar low down. Most of the sheet is empty.
Step 2. How it is made. Papers painted with gouache were cut into rectangles and stuck on over the charcoal drawing. The blue paper has a torn, creased edge: these were working materials, handled while the artist decided.
Step 3. What it means. This is not a finished work; one way to see it is as thinking made visible. The empty space seems as important as the colours: art historians often suggest Mondrian was testing how little he needed to make the whole sheet feel balanced. It shows why planning with loose pieces works: you can try many arrangements in minutes.
Write your message as one short sentence of about seven words or fewer, such as “Plastic is choking Lake Kivu”. A collage that tries to say five things says nothing. Decide also what the message should do:
| Purpose | Example message | Useful pictures |
|---|---|---|
| Inform | Malaria spreads at night. | mosquito, moon, sleeping child |
| Persuade | Use a bag you can carry again. | woven basket, plastic bag crossed out |
| Celebrate | Our market is full of life. | fruit, faces, kitenge, busy hands |
| Ask a question | Where does your water come from? | tap, jerrycan, spring, question mark |
Your audience decides everything else. Young pupils need big, simple pictures and very few words. Adults at a health centre can read a short sentence. People passing a notice board give it about three seconds, so the main picture must work from across the room.
Make a mind map with your message in the centre. Around it, write or sketch every picture, colour and word that could stand for it. A symbol is a picture that stands for an idea: a dove for peace, a cracked earth for drought, a raised hand for “stop”. Choose symbols your audience will recognise.
Draw three small, quick layouts, each about 6 cm by 8.5 cm, using a different composition grid (Figure 2). Keep them rough: boxes and circles are enough.
Rule the same grid lightly on your support and copy the thumbnail square by square, so every shape keeps its place.
Definition
Composition: the way the parts of an artwork are arranged on the surface.
Focal point: the part of an artwork the eye goes to first. You create it with contrast: the biggest shape, the strongest colour, the sharpest edge, or the only face in the picture.
Definition
Rule of thirds: a guide that divides the picture into three equal parts across and three equal parts down. Placing the focal point where two of the lines cross usually looks more lively than placing it dead centre.
For a support of width , the vertical lines are drawn at and from the left edge.
Definition
Balance: the sense that visual weight is shared evenly. In symmetrical balance both halves match, like a mirror; in asymmetrical balance a big shape on one side is balanced by several small or bright shapes on the other.
Thumbnail sketch: a small, quick drawing used to test a layout. Negative space: the empty areas around and between shapes.
Worked example: planning an A3 collage for Rubavu
Keza's class will display collages at a market beside Lake Kivu in Rubavu. Her audience is fish sellers and shoppers.
Message: “Plastic is choking Lake Kivu” (five words). Purpose: persuade.
Symbols: a fish (the lake's life), a plastic bottle (the waste), blue torn paper (water), a fishing boat cut from kitenge (the people who depend on the lake).
Grid: rule of thirds, with the focal point (the fish trapped inside a bottle) where the upper-left lines cross, and the slogan along the bottom third.
Marking the grid on A3 portrait paper (29.7 cm wide, 42 cm high):
So the focal point sits 9.9 cm from the left edge and 14 cm from the top.
Enlarging: her thumbnail is 6 cm wide. The scale factor is
so a fish 2 cm long on the thumbnail must be cut about long on the collage.
<em>Romare Bearden, Three Folk Musicians</em>, from Smarthistory. Two art historians look closely at a 1967 collage. Watch for how the three figures are placed across the picture, and how cut photographs and flat coloured papers lead your eye from one figure to the next.
Tip
“One message, one focal point.” If you cannot point to the focal point of your thumbnail in one second, simplify it. Rule grid lines lightly in pencil so they can be rubbed out or hidden under paper.
Practice
Define focal point and give two ways of creating one in a collage.
A collage is made on A4 paper turned landscape, 29.7 cm wide and 21 cm high. Where should the rule-of-thirds lines be drawn?
Mugisha's thumbnail is 5 cm wide and his support is 30 cm wide. What is the scale factor? How tall must his slogan letters be if they are 1.5 cm tall on the thumbnail?
Two collages share the message “Wash your hands”. One is for P2 pupils, one for adults at a health centre. Give two differences in how you would design them.
Umutoni wants one collage to warn about malaria, promote tree planting and celebrate her football team. Evaluate this plan and give her advice.
Using your picture bank from Lesson 1, write your message in seven words or fewer and draw three thumbnails, each with a different grid from Figure 2. Mark the focal point on each with a small cross.
1. The focal point is the part of an artwork the eye goes to first. Create it with contrast: make it the biggest shape, the brightest or strongest colour, the only sharp or detailed part, or the only face; you can also place it where rule-of-thirds lines cross.
2. Vertical lines at and from the left; horizontal lines at and from the top.
3. . The letters must be tall.
4. For example: for P2, huge simple pictures (hands, soap, water) and one or two words; for adults, a short sentence or steps and possibly a fact. For P2, bright contrasting colours; for adults, a calmer palette can work.
5. The plan has three unrelated messages, so the collage would have no clear focal point and viewers would not know what to take away. Advise her to choose one message, make one collage about it, and keep the other ideas for other works.
6. Practical. Check: one message of seven words or fewer, three different grids, and a clear focal point marked on each thumbnail.
Sources and credits
