“PAPER TRAIL COLLAGES”
Make a personal map of how you read a newspaper using traditional or digital collage. (or combine them!)
In the Art Prof Discord Server, we have an #art-dares channel where you can post your WIP, and get feedback & support during the month!
Crosby Morrow
mixed media
USA
@kind2creatures
“While admittedly I am not a newspaper reader (although working on this made me want to get into doing the crosswords!), I think I use it almost everyday. Whether I’m using it to build an armature for my newest sculpture, or just using it to keep pastel and paint off my table, it’s a constant tool I use.
This plant is loosely based off of two real houseplants I have, my Syngoniums and Aglaonemas! The leaves are just made of different cuttings of a newspaper, and the stems are just paper tape around pieces of wire. The substrate you see is ripped pieces from a brown paper bag that I dyed and curled to be like mulch or orchid bark. The pot is made of exposed cardboard that I coated with a mixture of white chalk paint and wood glue, to give it a ceramic-ish appearance.”
Sarah C. McGill
Self Portrait of my Relationship with the News
collage, mixed media
Canada
@snapsketchsnooze
“This collage is less a map and more a bumpy terrain crossed with a self portrait reflecting how I’ve read the news over my life. The relatively calm background is some of the Sunday comics I enjoyed as a kid. As a young adult, I read mostly the life and opinions sections: there’s clips of these my face.
Since 2020, reading the news has been an overwhelming whirlpool of COVID-19 stories, daily reports of case numbers, and other bad news. I follow the daily CBC Morning Brief and Coronavirus Brief on my phone, so I built repetitive clips of these over the waves of hair, as my hair has been growing long during social distancing.
Sources used: the woman illustration is part of a Globe & Mail column illustrated by April dela Noche Milne; the comics Mutts, Calvin & Hobbs, Blondie, Beetle Bailey, Mother Goose and Grimm, Hagar the Horrible (there were so many more I could have added!); plus various photos and clippings from CBC.ca news.”
Madeline Bedrosian
acrylic, newspaper
USA
@maddyart3
“This art dare was definitely a little out of my comfort zone….but It turned out to be super fun! I knew I wanted to incorporate comics in some way, since that is the only reason I will pick up a newspaper:) Other then that I didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted to make until I started . I had seen a lot of flower artwork recently and decided that work be fun to try. The rest of the piece just sorta came from that!”
Ana Wieder Blank
colored pencil, oil pastel, newspaper collage
“I wanted to convey the way that over-saturation of news media creates great anxiety. I have found that the only way to protect my mental health in these times has been to limit my consumption of news. I used the newspaper to create screens that you see on the phone and TVs.
I also cut out brain shapes from the newspaper and collaged them to the various figures in the drawing. I responded to the illustrations in the newspaper to create a narrative composition.”
Isaiah Hornedo
digital
“The artwork speaks to the current events in our society and the social impacts that are dividing our country.”
Charlotte Furneaux
newspaper, watercolor, oil pastels
United Kingdom
@char.furn
“The first collage was a walking tour map and highlighted the different sections of the articles I read and stood out to me. The different colours also represent how the topics made me feel with the arrows showing the order of reading, I tend to flick rather than read sequentially.
I had a lot of fun with this and found it quite energizing to produce. The second collage the words come from the headings of stories with each letter cut from the area of the stories text. This one was more organized than the chaos of the first collage.
I tried to get the stories in the words within each letter i.e. the stolen painting from Italy inside the ‘T’ and ‘A.’ Collage isn’t something I would normally do I feel like it’s a good opportunity to do something new and develop a different way of approaching things.”
Clara May Maxson
acrylic, marker
“I was recently going through God’s World News magazines from 10 years ago and thought it would be cool to create some artwork with them. I chose January 2011 edition and created a town with the articles.”
Hannah Korza
digital
“The artwork speaks to the current events in our society and the social impacts that are dividing our country.”