Collecting Collage Images

One of my favorite things to do in mixed media is sift through all of the images. I love to collect them too. They're really fun to find too. When you start mixed media, you'll find images everywhere. It's just bound to happen. This post is for those of you who are just beginning mixed media, and are trying to find pieces to use in your artwork, OR for those of you that just want to find NEW places to find images. As you advance in your artistic journey, you will start to open your eyes to the things all around you. This is just a short list of suggestions for image locations, and don't be limited to these. Here is a short list however:

• Magazines. This is the most common place that people will look for images. This is the most referred to reference, and these work well for larger, glossier photos.
• Junk Mail. This doesn't sound like a good idea, since a lot of this stuff is JUNK after all. At least that's what they'd lead you to believe. I love a lot of the images you can find in the junk catalogues.
• Catalogues. These have tons of textures and images of people in them. Amazing for mixed media.
• Online Collage Sheets. These can be free or paid for. Either way, these are excellent sources. Sometimes they have color images, and sometimes they have black and white sketches. A lot of the images shown above are from free collage sheets.
• Old books. A lot of books in general have really nice, vintage looking images in them. A lot of them are black and white.

These are all I can think of right this minute, but I hope they help you with finding some things to use in your artwork. Remember. Images are everywhere. You just have to find them.

Collage Unleashed by Traci Bautista

As I was sitting down yesterday, brainstorming ideas for the blog, I had an idea. To me, at the time, it seemed genius. It's probably not as cool as I thought it was, but I'm gonna work with it anyways. I own a book called Collage Unleashed by Traci Bautista. It was given to me in a RAK by Dede (Thanks Dede!!), and I've loved looking through it and simply using it for inspiration in my art. But here's the deal. I haven't really done that many of the projects done in it. I just thought that it might be cool to mess around with the many different projects in the book.

I know that there are a bunch of people out there that are considering buying the book, but aren't sure about it. Maybe this will also help them figure out if it's their style of something to invest it. I actually highly recommend this book though, because I think that it's very well written and also very inspirational to all creative types. Even if you're a quilter, I'm pretty sure the colors and combinations that she does in the book would give you inspiration. I think that she has a style that just feels so playful and fearless - a lot like I try to have in my artwork. I love the book. It's amazing.

Anyways, if you're looking for an update on some of my artwork, I don't really have any pictures today either, but I do have a few words to share with you. I've been working dutifully on my trench coat muslin; I don't know if I mentioned that on here before or not. I've mostly just been playing around with shapes and cutting out all of my pieces that are necessary to the coat itself. So yeah. That's what I've got for you and I'll see you all next time!!