5 Most Important Elements when Designing a Collage: A Beginners Guide to Paper Crafts

These 5 elements are all of the design elements the paper crafts or collage artist must consider when creating a collage.

5 Important Elements in Collage: A Beginners Guide to Paper Crafts

Collage is a valid art form, and as such, there are very specific elements that make a collage design work or not work.

Usually, your eyes can tell you if a collage is properly designed or not. You can see what works and what does not in collage, even if you cannot verbalize it. Here is a basic guide to the seven most important design elements in collage.

I have always used collage to explore color, design, new ideas, and paper crafts supplies. I find that taking a half-worked or abandoned painting and re-creating it with collage can be artistically rewarding as well as profitable. In my very first art show invitational, I sold both of the pieces I entered, which were both collages. I still receive requests for copies of those collages.

1. Color Choice

"It is not the form that dictates the color, but the color that brings out the form." - Hans Hoffman, German Abstract Painter

In collage, as in other paper crafts there are no right and wrong colors. It is possible, however to mis-match colors and complements, or to use too many colors. Just as you can muddy up a watercolor painting with too many paint colors, you can also muddy up, or brown out a paper crafts collage.

In order to properly use color in your collages, brush up on
color theory, even if it means making your own color wheel. Make that your first paper crafts project. Collage together a color wheel.

Another important aspect of color to consider is the Value of the color. Using a combination of both dark colors and light colors in your collages add depth to your paper crafts images.

Both color and value can impart a mood or feeling to the viewer.

2. Line

In paper crafts including collage "lines" are not drawn or painted, they are created by the actual pieces of paper that adhered to the support. The lines in collages direct the eyes.

3. Movement