Texture/Collage

Texture is how we describe the surface quality of a 2-dimensional design. With physical objects, we experience texture when we touch their roughness, smoothness ect. We call this a tactile experience, which means a sensation experienced through the sense of touch.

In design, particularly collage, we CAN use materials with real tactile surfaces such as cloth or sandpaper. We say these materials have Actual Texture. More frequently though, we are using photography, digital illustration, drawing or other media to simulate the mapping these tactile impressions on to the two-dimensional picture.  Thus materials  or images that have the visual illusion of texture but not the tactile qualities are called Simulated Textures. It  is usually by capturing created the varying pattern of light and dark areas on a surface that this is achieved by either camera or hand.

Collage: From the French, meaning 'pasteup,' An artistic composition of materials and textures pasted over a surface, often with unifying aesthetics or themes. Often this term is also applied to digital compositions featuring the integration and overlapping of multiple visual elements

For our next assignment we are going to be experimenting with actual and simulated texture within the framework of 2 specific, and very different approaches to collage.

COLLAGE TYPE 1: RE-CONTEXT

This approach to collage is where artists cut out entire identifiable images (people/objects/words/environments) from various different sources (contexts) and put them together in a new image (recontextualize.) This is usually done to create an unusual, fragmented, immediate image that refers to the culture around us in addition to the artist's vision.  Good Re-context collages  should be both bold, energetic and have a P.O.V.

COLLAGE TYPE 2: MOSAIC

This approach to collage is where artists 'paint with paper,' that is, they lay out an idea for an image in pencil and then 'color' it by cutting or tearing pieces of paper or other 2-d materials who are chosen for their color of texture. Entire images are not cut out, just a palette made of fragments of paper.