Aside from working on commissioned illustrations, Kövecses enjoys exploring small quiet scenes that portray parts of her everyday life. Living in a small seaside village on the island of Cyprus, her inspiration comes from living by the Mediterranean Sea, growing up in Eastern Europe, and being a mother of three small kids.

“I often scribble some vague sketches into my phone or notebooks that lay around the house and then get back to them later to turn them into final artworks,” she described her creative process in an interview with Papirmass. “When working I often surround myself with books and albums on art, plants, children’s novels, landscapes or food that I spread out on the floor like a live mood board,” she notes “I spend the morning drawing or working on illustration projects and drinking way too much tea.”

“It took me quite a while to learn how to distinguish myself as an artist and my other self as an illustrator,” admits Kövecses. “Accepting the fact that as an illustrator I usually have to follow instructions I still find it hard to cope with tweaking my artwork many times before coming up with a final illustration.”

When not working on commissioned projects, Kövecses creates drawings with oil pastels, experiments with clay and paints with her kids’ tempera. She also enjoys baking fresh bread in the morning, picking oranges, and growing veggies in their garden. An ideal lifestyle if you ask us.

The post The Digital Collage Art of Anna Kövecses appeared first on PlayJunkie.

“I’m restless, very curious and I’m really open to mistakes,” he described himself in an interview with Another Fine Mess. An artist and an image-maker, he creates imaginary worlds from torn pieces found in the real world. “Organizing chaos is the main task of any collage artists,” he reflected. “From millions of possible images (a universe of chaos), we decide to use only a few and combine them in a particular way to make our discourse visible through them. We are editors of reality and builders of new worlds. We are twisting the world we know to make a new one come to life.”

His process seems to be working, with his work having been exhibited in galleries in Barcelona, London, Madrid, New York, Tokyo, Berlin, Rotterdam, Rome, and Lima, to name a few. He has also worked with brands such as Nike, Wired Magazine, Spotify, and Universal Pictures, providing his signature collage work for commercial and editorial projects.

“I love to work with limits,” Tuja says, describing his creative process. “Most of the times I invent secret (and stupid) rules of production to create my collages. Collages created with 3 pieces and two main colors; collages created with the letters B-D of an encyclopedia and a skate magazine… these are some rules that I impose on myself to create collage series. Limits are boosters of creativity and I love working with them.” According to him, “in commercial work this is not always possible because of time and concept limits. In commercial work the brief is at the same time the limit and the inspiration. You have to make the most of the story that someone else wants you to tell.”

Take a look at some of his creations (commercial and otherwise) in the gallery below:

The post Finding Order In Chaos: Max-o-matic’s Collage Art appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Her pieces — a hybrid between paintings, collages, drawings, textile art, and digital art — usually begin with an image found on the internet, in magazines, or thrift shops. Often, these images become the physical basis for her new work. With digital sketches, prints, markers, spray paint, thread, and ink, Vooijs transforms these images so that they reflect her life and her aesthetics.

“I like to see what happens when you cross digital stuff and layer that with traditional methods,” she writes on her website. “Building up and peeling pieces away or scratching my way back to the surface, until I feel that it might be time to step back and leave it alone,” she explains.

With her methods varying, each piece can take anywhere between a couple of hours to more than a week to complete. “Some pieces took so long I almost gave up,” she admitted in an interview with Jung Katz. “Actually, I did repaint a lot of my work… sometimes it’s just the quickest fix and besides that, it’s budget-friendly. I also often work on a couple of pieces simultaneously.”

Her toolbox ranges from the traditional to the digital and includes Photoshop, Wacom Intuos tablet, A3 printer, digital prints, transfers, acrylic, oil, spray paint, Tipp-Ex, embroidery, markers, pencils, ink, and carbon paper.

Follow her work on Instagram:

The post The Soft, Layered Art of Dorris Vooijs appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Inspired by graffiti, urban decay, and music, Voelker experiments with his source material, challenging our ideas about collage art. “I developed a process to fix the charcoal to paper to ensure its reliability as a medium for collage,” he explains. “The drawings are cut and arranged, layer after layer until a finished work emerges.”

With printmaking, Voelker first makes the prints with ink or paint, after which he cuts and collages them into complex layers with intersecting lines and spaces. According to him, this work involves an improvisational process of placing the pieces on a board, then arranging them as he sees fit.

Some of his work consists of white ovals or circles framing them (which are also collaged). According to Voelker, these ovals represent portals, through which the viewer is invited to look inside and catch a glimpse of something on the other side.

“I consider collage a language,” he says “and find interest in how individual pieces come together to convey a story.” Take a closer look:

The post Daniel Voelker is Fluent In the Language of Collage Making appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Originally from England and currently based in Berkeley, California, McCann’s creative passion sparked early on, taking to painting, drawing, cutting, and reading from a very young age. “I ended up going to fashion school and working in the industry for a little while but after I moved to the USA with my family I started painting again and taking art classes,” she relayed in an interview with Jung Katz. “I became fascinated with collage and eventually gave up the paintbrush and took up the scissors.”

Now, armed with just a pair of scissors, she creates her intricate, hand cut collages, which she admits reflect her Victorian obsession with faeries, flora, and fauna. Those are collected from her large collection of books, prints, and pages that are antique, forgotten, and foxed with age. “I cut out images, categorize them and then eventually piece them together like a complex paper jigsaw,” she explains on her website.

A common theme throughout her work is the female face, which often acts as a reflection of the natural and sometimes magical world. She can be surrounded by birds, fish, and butterflies or submerged in a dense wallpaper pattern which either represents her prison or her liberation.

Here are some highlights from McCann’s rich portfolio:

The post Where Beauty is Strange and Creatures Are Curious: ​Katie McCann’s Collage Art appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Born in Spain and currently based in Paris, Pallarés admits to being inspired by the Dada movement as well as Surrealist art. “I found Dadaism and Surrealism when I was studying graphic design at the university and somehow that changed my life,” she relayed in an interview with Talenthouse. “I was blown away by how Dada artists used the composition, the typography, and the color. It just matched perfectly my way to understand the aesthetic of design and I suddenly found the answer for many questions about the meaning of contemporary art.”

It was then that she took to collage making, employing it as a creative tool, but she admits the beginning was something of a mess. “in the beginning I didn’t know what I really wanted to do,” she says. “So, most of the works that I did at that time were clumsy compositions mixing photo and oil painting.”

Nowadays, most of her work is personal, centered around portraits of people she admires. With her more conceptual collages, she takes a different approach, touching upon subjects that she finds important or compelling such as the passing of time, childhood, womanhood, and the unconscious.

Her collages are featured in international magazines and showcased in exhibitions, art fairs, and other creative events. But you can also follow her work online, via Instagram.

The post Helena Pallarés’ Collage Art Is Inspired By Dadaism and Surrealism appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Chastain started these experiments in 2008 when she fell in love with vintage book covers, scribbles, stamps, water and ink marks.

“What I adore about collage as a medium is the complete versatility and the allowances that it gives first-time creators to play around with color and texture and composition without any ‘but I can’t draw’ and ‘I’m not an artist’ hang-ups,” the artist told Colossal.

The artist also wrote a book named “If You Can Cut, You Can Collage,” in which she explained and illustrated basic techniques and methods for anyone who wants to learn to collage. Just like the name of this book suggests, Chastain wanted to inspire and encourage people who feel like they can’t make art to try! Because we can all be creative and do it!

Check out her artwork in the photos below.

The post Intricate Textured Collages by Hollie Chastain appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Her magazine paintings aim to liberate and transform the figures she collects beyond recognition to create ethereal yet provocative works that question notions of identity and how women are perceived and perceive themselves. “My aim is to test the limits of the paper and paint,” she explained in a piece she wrote for Create Magazine. “I am looking for reactions between the paint and the paper and how one layer of paint is impacted by the preceding layers.”

According to Brewster, there is often buckling, cracking, and distortions in colors. Such unpredictability is thrilling to her. “I am always testing the materials, colors, and textures to act beyond what I expect and can control,” she writes. “I encourage the paint to do things it’s not supposed to do to create happy accidents.”

Ironically enough, her cut-up paintings and collages have been published in many glossy magazines themselves, including Vogue, World of Interiors, and Marie-Claire Maison. Her work has also been exhibited widely – from Manchester Art Gallery to Sydney, Australia.

But you can also follow her online:

The post Painting, Stippling, and Layering: Claire Brewster’s Unique Artwork appeared first on PlayJunkie.

The results are striking portraits that blend into the paper maps upon which they were illustrated. According to Fairburn, his aim with these works is to preserve the functionality of each map by feeding the composition instead of fighting it. To accomplish this, he often spends hours studying each map before beginning any physical processes.

“I like a map that’s easy to fold away, but I don’t let that influence my choice,” he added in an interview with yatzer in which he described his preferred materials. “I’ll either source my maps from charity shops or old book shops – we have lots of both here in the UK,” he explained. “If I’m working on a specific commission I’ll usually source a map on the internet to make the most suitable choice, in terms of the location. When considering a map to work on, I look at the patterns, orientation, and other characteristics – I usually find that the more ‘cluttered’ maps offer the most scope.”

Using the found paper maps as his canvas, Fairburn is interested in the subtlety of each synchronization, and the way in which each completed map behaves more like a portrait when viewed from further away. Take a closer look:

The post Ed Fairburn Transforms Paper Maps Into Portraits appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Much like her creations, her approach to collage making is rather unique. Intertwining different film and TV genres – from vintage Hollywood to 1970s sci-fi, B-movies, and TV trash – Rivans’ work is in a constant dialogue with cultures of the past, reinventing existing film plots and narratives while spinning bizarre and dreamlike tales.

Like most collage artists, her process begins with an extensive collection of vintage ephemera, which she scavenges from antique books and retro magazines. Like piecing together an unruly jigsaw puzzle, Rivans begins to collate and assemble the cut-out fragments and scraps, laboring over long periods and making alteration after alteration, until the collage begins to take shape.

Her use of collage might reflect the complex and fragmented world from which her art arises, but an attention to beauty and to the harmony of composition gestures optimistically towards the social capacity to piece it back together again.

Rivans’ work takes the form of both large-scale originals and limited edition prints. Each of her artworks is the product of months of careful deliberations and decisions, every tiny tweak necessary in the final formation. The result – whether big or small – is well worth following.

The post Surrealism Meets Pop-Art: Follow Collage Artist Maria Rivans appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Aside from working on commissioned illustrations, Kövecses enjoys exploring small quiet scenes that portray parts of her everyday life. Living in a small seaside village on the island of Cyprus, her inspiration comes from living by the Mediterranean Sea, growing up in Eastern Europe, and being a mother of three small kids.

“I often scribble some vague sketches into my phone or notebooks that lay around the house and then get back to them later to turn them into final artworks,” she described her creative process in an interview with Papirmass. “When working I often surround myself with books and albums on art, plants, children’s novels, landscapes or food that I spread out on the floor like a live mood board,” she notes “I spend the morning drawing or working on illustration projects and drinking way too much tea.”

“It took me quite a while to learn how to distinguish myself as an artist and my other self as an illustrator,” admits Kövecses. “Accepting the fact that as an illustrator I usually have to follow instructions I still find it hard to cope with tweaking my artwork many times before coming up with a final illustration.”

When not working on commissioned projects, Kövecses creates drawings with oil pastels, experiments with clay and paints with her kids’ tempera. She also enjoys baking fresh bread in the morning, picking oranges, and growing veggies in their garden. An ideal lifestyle if you ask us.

The post The Digital Collage Art of Anna Kövecses appeared first on PlayJunkie.

“I’m restless, very curious and I’m really open to mistakes,” he described himself in an interview with Another Fine Mess. An artist and an image-maker, he creates imaginary worlds from torn pieces found in the real world. “Organizing chaos is the main task of any collage artists,” he reflected. “From millions of possible images (a universe of chaos), we decide to use only a few and combine them in a particular way to make our discourse visible through them. We are editors of reality and builders of new worlds. We are twisting the world we know to make a new one come to life.”

His process seems to be working, with his work having been exhibited in galleries in Barcelona, London, Madrid, New York, Tokyo, Berlin, Rotterdam, Rome, and Lima, to name a few. He has also worked with brands such as Nike, Wired Magazine, Spotify, and Universal Pictures, providing his signature collage work for commercial and editorial projects.

“I love to work with limits,” Tuja says, describing his creative process. “Most of the times I invent secret (and stupid) rules of production to create my collages. Collages created with 3 pieces and two main colors; collages created with the letters B-D of an encyclopedia and a skate magazine… these are some rules that I impose on myself to create collage series. Limits are boosters of creativity and I love working with them.” According to him, “in commercial work this is not always possible because of time and concept limits. In commercial work the brief is at the same time the limit and the inspiration. You have to make the most of the story that someone else wants you to tell.”

Take a look at some of his creations (commercial and otherwise) in the gallery below:

The post Finding Order In Chaos: Max-o-matic’s Collage Art appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Her pieces — a hybrid between paintings, collages, drawings, textile art, and digital art — usually begin with an image found on the internet, in magazines, or thrift shops. Often, these images become the physical basis for her new work. With digital sketches, prints, markers, spray paint, thread, and ink, Vooijs transforms these images so that they reflect her life and her aesthetics.

“I like to see what happens when you cross digital stuff and layer that with traditional methods,” she writes on her website. “Building up and peeling pieces away or scratching my way back to the surface, until I feel that it might be time to step back and leave it alone,” she explains.

With her methods varying, each piece can take anywhere between a couple of hours to more than a week to complete. “Some pieces took so long I almost gave up,” she admitted in an interview with Jung Katz. “Actually, I did repaint a lot of my work… sometimes it’s just the quickest fix and besides that, it’s budget-friendly. I also often work on a couple of pieces simultaneously.”

Her toolbox ranges from the traditional to the digital and includes Photoshop, Wacom Intuos tablet, A3 printer, digital prints, transfers, acrylic, oil, spray paint, Tipp-Ex, embroidery, markers, pencils, ink, and carbon paper.

Follow her work on Instagram:

The post The Soft, Layered Art of Dorris Vooijs appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Inspired by graffiti, urban decay, and music, Voelker experiments with his source material, challenging our ideas about collage art. “I developed a process to fix the charcoal to paper to ensure its reliability as a medium for collage,” he explains. “The drawings are cut and arranged, layer after layer until a finished work emerges.”

With printmaking, Voelker first makes the prints with ink or paint, after which he cuts and collages them into complex layers with intersecting lines and spaces. According to him, this work involves an improvisational process of placing the pieces on a board, then arranging them as he sees fit.

Some of his work consists of white ovals or circles framing them (which are also collaged). According to Voelker, these ovals represent portals, through which the viewer is invited to look inside and catch a glimpse of something on the other side.

“I consider collage a language,” he says “and find interest in how individual pieces come together to convey a story.” Take a closer look:

The post Daniel Voelker is Fluent In the Language of Collage Making appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Originally from England and currently based in Berkeley, California, McCann’s creative passion sparked early on, taking to painting, drawing, cutting, and reading from a very young age. “I ended up going to fashion school and working in the industry for a little while but after I moved to the USA with my family I started painting again and taking art classes,” she relayed in an interview with Jung Katz. “I became fascinated with collage and eventually gave up the paintbrush and took up the scissors.”

Now, armed with just a pair of scissors, she creates her intricate, hand cut collages, which she admits reflect her Victorian obsession with faeries, flora, and fauna. Those are collected from her large collection of books, prints, and pages that are antique, forgotten, and foxed with age. “I cut out images, categorize them and then eventually piece them together like a complex paper jigsaw,” she explains on her website.

A common theme throughout her work is the female face, which often acts as a reflection of the natural and sometimes magical world. She can be surrounded by birds, fish, and butterflies or submerged in a dense wallpaper pattern which either represents her prison or her liberation.

Here are some highlights from McCann’s rich portfolio:

The post Where Beauty is Strange and Creatures Are Curious: ​Katie McCann’s Collage Art appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Born in Spain and currently based in Paris, Pallarés admits to being inspired by the Dada movement as well as Surrealist art. “I found Dadaism and Surrealism when I was studying graphic design at the university and somehow that changed my life,” she relayed in an interview with Talenthouse. “I was blown away by how Dada artists used the composition, the typography, and the color. It just matched perfectly my way to understand the aesthetic of design and I suddenly found the answer for many questions about the meaning of contemporary art.”

It was then that she took to collage making, employing it as a creative tool, but she admits the beginning was something of a mess. “in the beginning I didn’t know what I really wanted to do,” she says. “So, most of the works that I did at that time were clumsy compositions mixing photo and oil painting.”

Nowadays, most of her work is personal, centered around portraits of people she admires. With her more conceptual collages, she takes a different approach, touching upon subjects that she finds important or compelling such as the passing of time, childhood, womanhood, and the unconscious.

Her collages are featured in international magazines and showcased in exhibitions, art fairs, and other creative events. But you can also follow her work online, via Instagram.

The post Helena Pallarés’ Collage Art Is Inspired By Dadaism and Surrealism appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Chastain started these experiments in 2008 when she fell in love with vintage book covers, scribbles, stamps, water and ink marks.

“What I adore about collage as a medium is the complete versatility and the allowances that it gives first-time creators to play around with color and texture and composition without any ‘but I can’t draw’ and ‘I’m not an artist’ hang-ups,” the artist told Colossal.

The artist also wrote a book named “If You Can Cut, You Can Collage,” in which she explained and illustrated basic techniques and methods for anyone who wants to learn to collage. Just like the name of this book suggests, Chastain wanted to inspire and encourage people who feel like they can’t make art to try! Because we can all be creative and do it!

Check out her artwork in the photos below.

The post Intricate Textured Collages by Hollie Chastain appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Her magazine paintings aim to liberate and transform the figures she collects beyond recognition to create ethereal yet provocative works that question notions of identity and how women are perceived and perceive themselves. “My aim is to test the limits of the paper and paint,” she explained in a piece she wrote for Create Magazine. “I am looking for reactions between the paint and the paper and how one layer of paint is impacted by the preceding layers.”

According to Brewster, there is often buckling, cracking, and distortions in colors. Such unpredictability is thrilling to her. “I am always testing the materials, colors, and textures to act beyond what I expect and can control,” she writes. “I encourage the paint to do things it’s not supposed to do to create happy accidents.”

Ironically enough, her cut-up paintings and collages have been published in many glossy magazines themselves, including Vogue, World of Interiors, and Marie-Claire Maison. Her work has also been exhibited widely – from Manchester Art Gallery to Sydney, Australia.

But you can also follow her online:

The post Painting, Stippling, and Layering: Claire Brewster’s Unique Artwork appeared first on PlayJunkie.

The results are striking portraits that blend into the paper maps upon which they were illustrated. According to Fairburn, his aim with these works is to preserve the functionality of each map by feeding the composition instead of fighting it. To accomplish this, he often spends hours studying each map before beginning any physical processes.

“I like a map that’s easy to fold away, but I don’t let that influence my choice,” he added in an interview with yatzer in which he described his preferred materials. “I’ll either source my maps from charity shops or old book shops – we have lots of both here in the UK,” he explained. “If I’m working on a specific commission I’ll usually source a map on the internet to make the most suitable choice, in terms of the location. When considering a map to work on, I look at the patterns, orientation, and other characteristics – I usually find that the more ‘cluttered’ maps offer the most scope.”

Using the found paper maps as his canvas, Fairburn is interested in the subtlety of each synchronization, and the way in which each completed map behaves more like a portrait when viewed from further away. Take a closer look:

The post Ed Fairburn Transforms Paper Maps Into Portraits appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Much like her creations, her approach to collage making is rather unique. Intertwining different film and TV genres – from vintage Hollywood to 1970s sci-fi, B-movies, and TV trash – Rivans’ work is in a constant dialogue with cultures of the past, reinventing existing film plots and narratives while spinning bizarre and dreamlike tales.

Like most collage artists, her process begins with an extensive collection of vintage ephemera, which she scavenges from antique books and retro magazines. Like piecing together an unruly jigsaw puzzle, Rivans begins to collate and assemble the cut-out fragments and scraps, laboring over long periods and making alteration after alteration, until the collage begins to take shape.

Her use of collage might reflect the complex and fragmented world from which her art arises, but an attention to beauty and to the harmony of composition gestures optimistically towards the social capacity to piece it back together again.

Rivans’ work takes the form of both large-scale originals and limited edition prints. Each of her artworks is the product of months of careful deliberations and decisions, every tiny tweak necessary in the final formation. The result – whether big or small – is well worth following.

The post Surrealism Meets Pop-Art: Follow Collage Artist Maria Rivans appeared first on PlayJunkie.