"If you hear a voice within you saying �You are not a painter,� then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced."
Vincent Van Gogh

Step 2: Select your four papers

• You will need a variety of different papers for this activity to select from
• Look around and see what interests you. You can find interesting patterns in newspapers or magazines as well as pictures and text; you can recycle coloured wrapping paper, wallpaper and greetings cards, etc. and you can combine these with craft papers if you wish
• When you have gathered your materials, choose four different types of paper for your collage

Step 3: Create positive and negative shapes

• Drawing round your chosen shape in the three sizes and cutting out carefully you’ll find that you have one positive shape - the shape you have cut out - and one negative shape - the space left in the paper you have cut the shape from

• For this activity cut three shapes out in various sizes and also create one ‘negative space’ shape so you have four pieces in total from your four different papers

Tip:

It is most effective to use contrasting colours and textures and using some ripped edges often looks good too, as you can see in our example below.

Step 4: Arrange your design

• Create a composition by laying out the shapes you have prepared on a piece of coloured card, cartridge paper (Note: the colour of the card will be part of your design so try out different coloured backgrounds if you can)
• Arrange your shapes, overlapping them until you create a pleasing composition. The above image shows different compositions (layouts) using the same elements (shapes)
• When you are happy with your design, glue the shapes down using a glue stick or thinly applied PVA glue
• When you have done this you’ll have a finished collage