A Step by Step Guide For Anyone To Make Amazing Wall Art at Home Even If You Think You Suck At Painting

When I heard the word “collage” for most of my life, I used to imagine abstract art where mainly newspaper and magazine clippings form a random mess of things that don’t really add up to a functional, tangible image. Maybe it’s because that’s the type of collages we used to make in school growing up and it’s all I really saw. The word “painting” meanwhile conjured images of beautiful farm scenery and historical events. My mind works a bit differently now, as my preferred art style when making my own paintings at home has become what I call “cogent collage”, combing the functionality and visual concreteness of paintings with the chaos of collages (gluing stuff to a canvas) to make something totally unique. If you go to local markets you might have seen art similar to this before, but the style of collages you can do at home with nothing but glue, random stuff, and a backdrop are infinite, even if you glue stuff to create a scene that makes sense rather than just an intangible mishmash of images.

How I Made These Three Matching Cogent Collages in 7 Steps

Step 1 – Creating the Background

I wanted to go with a sacred medieval vibe with these cogent collages after I found some black and white prints of cathedrals in an old history textbook. I started off knowing these cathedral cutouts would be the center focus of my art, but first it was time to paint the background. The lace ribbon was just a spur of the moment idea, but ended up creating a better texture to glue on some more stuff later on, which you will see. Spur of the moment decisions are exactly what you need here, because while cogent collages form a coherent image in the end they can still embrace the chaos vibes of traditional collages you might’ve made growing up.

Notice that, to make the background look cool, I’m literally just letting my subconscious do whatever it wants while I listen to music. I’m splashing, tapping, using brushes and leftover skewers from the BBQ to put paint wherever my hand wants to put it.

Step 2 – Adding The Cogent Part

After your background is done you should know what the cogent aspect of your collage is going to be. Are you trying to show a barn in a deserted farmland or a warrior on a battlefield? Whatever you decide, you need to get started on gluing on the cogent foundation of your work so the coherent aspect of your collage begins to take form.

Step 3 – Listen to Your Gut and Get Creative

Just like writing a book, you know where you’re going to start and you know how it’s going to end and so this long gap in the middle is where most of the spontaneous creativity flourishes. You have some stuff laying around your house that will give your art a very special quality, you just need to look for it.

This is how I got creative. To give a glowing effect to the golden border around the textbook cutout centerpiece, I created my own gold paint by mixing yellow with metallic silver that came with metal shavings in it. In this picture you can see the gold border is still wet, but when it dries (as seen the later pictures) it darkens slightly, and because I over-applied the paint it also forms cracks when it dries which make it look vintage.

Step 4 – Try Something Different

The beauty of cogent collages is that while you know the painting will form a sensical visual at the end rather than something abstract, you still have plenty of freedom to embrace the collage aspect of this art and try something conventional paintings would never do. Examples of this are gluing string around things to give it a raised border, gluing actual feathers and hair onto animals to make them look real, or in my case mixing art supplies together to make my own weird paints and veneers.

While my gold border was still wet, I mixed blue paint with glue to give a transparent, enamel-like coating over the textbook clippings to make it look like the cathedrals are behind a sheet of sapphire.

Here you can see the gold border is starting to dry, and because it was heavily applied it’s starting to crack and give that vintage gold look I talked about. Mixing blue paint with glue to give a veneer sort of look also looses some of its luster when it dries, but that’s okay.

Step 5 – Start Gluing Like Mad! (Plus Bonus Fun Couple’s Date Idea)

Now it’s time to start gluing more random stuff to it. I wanted to make it look like the cathedrals were shrouded by a majestic forest, giving the image a sense of depth. To gather the items I would need to make it look like a real forest, my girlfriend and I literally went on a forest hiking trail with a shopping bag and filled it with random twigs, flowers, pinecones, as well as pieces of moss, lichen, and bark. Whatever you find that’s dry and looks cool will work, just make sure to check that you’re not bringing spiders or bugs home too! I’ve been using regular liquid glue for small items, but when gluing on larger things like twigs and bark I opt for the hot glue gun.

Here you can see I’ve glued even more forest foliage onto the collages to make them more filled out. To create the sand under the blue cathedrals, you can actually just glue real sand there but I chose to use white rice this time. I think the rice sandbed looks cool!

Major tip: Also, if you haven’t noticed it helps a ton to work on all three paintings at the same time if you’re also doing matching paintings. I glue stuff on them together so that they fill out simultaneously and get finished at the same time for optimized consistency, while also giving each one its own character.

This gluing process happened over the course of several days as I’d wait for things to dry before continuing.

Step 6 – They’re Finished!

Boom, and just like that, after gluing on some more little gifts from the forest, my cogent collages are done. How do you know it’s done if there’s no limit to how much you can glue onto it? Good question. The truth is I finished gluing stuff on during an art session because I thought I’d spent enough time on it for one day. I didn’t actually know they were finished until I looked at them the next day and said, “Wow, cool.” That’s how you know they’re done!

Step 7 – Enjoy Your Own Custom Art in Your Home or Give It As a Gift

On top of our kitchen cabinets where we weren’t using the space was the perfect place for us to put these artworks for now. They add a splash of color and wonder to the home!

I hope this inspired you to get creative and make some beautiful artworks for your home. There’s no reason to stare at white walls when some random stuff, some glue, and some cheap canvas from the dollar store can make your living space look like you must have some professional interior designer as a friend or something… “Wow!” guests will say, “You really made this yourself?”

“Yes. Why, yes I did. Thank you.”