CAEL1001 Chap.4 Drawing Back into Collage
Drawing Back into Collage
Week 4 states its distinction in the first sentence and the whole studio depends on it: collage here is where the drawing starts rather than what it ends up being. The sequence is deliberate. You make an abstract ink drawing on A3 first, with brush marks, splatters, dots and washes, and let it dry, so the collage begins on a surface with its own tonal range and its own accidents.
Then you tear or cut six to eight shapes from printed material, trace, glue and connect them with line and pattern. Then you cut your own ink drawing into fragments, recombine, and keep drawing across the whole thing in mixed media. The chapter is organised around the two failures this produces most often and around the week's own reflection question about chance and intention.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Collage as a drawing process, and what that excludes
- 02
Stopping when the arrangement looks good: the commonest outcome
- 03
Letting a found image supply all the meaning
- 04
Why the ink drawing is made first and allowed to dry
- 05
Chance and intention as two independent axes rather than one
- 06
Four positions a sheet can occupy, and what each can honestly claim
- 07
Chance as a stated procedure rather than as not deciding
- 08
Making a mark cross the join between fragment and ground
- 09
Tearing against cutting, and when mixing them is noise
- 10
Photographing arrangements before anything is glued
- 11
What to keep for the week 6 presentation
Writing a chance procedure that will actually generate something
- 1State the rule in one checkable sentence, for example that every fragment must touch the edge of the sheet and no two may touch each other.
- 1Show it can be violated. Somebody else could look at the finished sheet and tell you whether the rule was followed, which is what makes it a procedure.
- 1Show it constrains without determining. The rule fixes relationships and leaves the specific positions open, so it will produce arrangements you actively dislike, which is the test that it is doing work.
Key terms
- Collage
- Work assembled from more than one material, image or paper stock. This unit treats it explicitly as a way of drawing rather than as a finished form.
- Photomontage
- Composition built from cut photographic images. Introduced this week through the Dada practice that used found imagery to argue about politics, gender and popular culture.
- Found material
- Printed matter brought into the work rather than made for it, such as magazine pages, newspaper or packaging. It arrives with content already attached.
- Psychogeographic map
- A map organised by the experience of moving through a place rather than by geography, developed in the Situationist practice the week introduces.
- Ink wash
- Diluted ink brushed over an area to lay broad tone. Used in the first activity alongside splatter and dot to build a ground with its own accidents.
Drawing Back into Collage FAQ
What is the difference between chance and just not deciding?
A stated procedure. Chance in this unit means a rule set in advance that somebody else could check and apply, such as requiring every fragment to bridge two zones of the ground. Not deciding produces the same visual randomness with nothing to describe afterwards, and the reflection has nowhere to go.
My collage looks like paper stuck on a drawing. What is missing?
Continuity across the join. Marks that sit only on the fragments or only on the ground confirm the boundary instead of crossing it. Run one pattern at a constant density straight across several fragment edges without pausing, since a mark that changes at the edge makes the eye read the edge again.
Should I tear or cut the shapes?
Either, but for a reason. Tearing leaves a fibrous edge with a pale halo, so the fragment sits into the ground as material. Cutting gives a hard mechanical edge that stays legible as an intervention. Mixing them at random within one sheet turns edge quality into noise rather than a variable.
Do I have to use magazine images?
The materials list asks for magazine pages, newsprint or any other printed stock you can collage with, so the category is wider than photographs. Plain printed stock, packaging and text-only pages all work, and they carry less pre-attached content, which makes it easier for your own marks to do the communicating.
Assessment move
Make the ink drawing properly rather than treating it as a warm-up, because it is the surface everything else negotiates with and it also becomes cut material in the third activity. Write your placement rule down before you place anything, then follow it even when you dislike the result, since disliking the result is the evidence that the procedure did something. Photograph every arrangement before gluing, as the unit asks.
Reserve at least a third of your studio time for drawing after the glue is dry, because that stage is the one the week is named after and it is the one most often skipped.
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