collage | Megan Coyle: Artist & Illustrator

June 8, 2017June 18, 2024

Mark and Sophie

“Mark and Sophie” is a portrait that I was commissioned to make for the wife of a former boss of mine – she wanted to give it to her husband for their anniversary.

It’s been a while since I’ve made a portrait collage, so this piece was definitely a bit of a struggle for me. Usually my collages are relatively flat when you look at the surface – I don’t usually use that many layers. However, for this piece, there are definitely sections where I built up the layers more so than others.

Here’s the sketch that this piece started off with:

You can see that it looks a lot different than the final piece. Sometimes my sketches don’t exactly look the way I want the final product to look, but they do give me an idea of how to block out the entire composition.

Anyway, although this piece was a struggle, eventually all the pieces fell into place. Just goes to show that if you keep at it with something, eventually you can accomplish your goal.

May 23, 2017June 5, 2024

Foxy

The other day I had a chance to finally finish a new collage – this fox portrait. I also was able to make another time lapse video, which was a lot of fun to put together:

What’s actually a little amusing is that for the previous time lapse videos I made, I used to sit underneath a tripod that held the video camera, trying with all my might not to bump into it while working on the collage. With this one, I realized I can just film the whole process upside down, then flip it when I edit the video. That way I’m free of working under a tripod. In the future, I’d also like to work on using better lighting for these to make it easier to see my process.

April 13, 2017April 12, 2017

In the Garden

“In the Garden” is a collage that I made back when I was in high school. It was made when I first started experimenting with collage. I had deemed the collage “finished,” and set it aside for some time. Then a couple of years later, when I was in college, I came across the collage and decided it wasn’t finished yet. So I proceeded to add in some more detailing with shadows and highlights, and then felt like it was closer to being “done.”

This might sound odd, but I never really feel like a work of art that I’m working on is ever finished. I simply give up on it after a certain amount of time. This is the only collage I’ve ever revisited after some time, however, I’m thinking it might be a good idea to start getting into the habit of reworking my older artwork.

April 6, 2017

Rebellion

Here’s a collage that I made back in high school, “Rebellion.” It was part of the series of collages I made at that time that really inspired the overall drive and direction of my work over the years. At that time, I was focussing on cutting and pasting paper while looking for solid colors and patterns in magazines. Then I manipulated the paper in such a way to create the shadows and highlights of the figure. I also remember that I really enjoyed cutting up the type that’s being used for the background here.

April 3, 2017June 18, 2024

Malachi

Portrait of a Dog by collage artist Megan Coyle — “Malachi” Collage on paper. 9″x12″
Order a print

Animals are one of my favorite subjects to tackle when it comes to piecing together my collages. Here’s a piece where I was commissioned to collage a dog that has two different color eyes. I’m thinking my next couple of collages will involve some more wildlife.

In other news, I’m planning to get started with exploring a couple different mediums. As much as I enjoy making collages, it’s always good to change things up every once in a while.

March 30, 2017

Running Water

This is a mixed media collage that I made back in high school, “Running Water.” I remember that I made this around the same time I started exploring the collage medium, and quickly grew to love it. This piece is a little more like a traditional collage since you can see distinct fragments that I cut from different magazine images. I also used acrylic paint and oil pastel along with the magazine clippings.

March 5, 2017June 19, 2024

The Serious Grin of the Eagle

After relaunching my portfolio site, I’ve finally had some time to make some new artwork. This is the first eagle portrait I’ve ever done, and it was interesting tackling an animal portrait after spending so many weeks immersed in coding websites and not making artwork.

The original is available for sale in my online store.

February 23, 2017March 29, 2017

Writer’s Block

This is a mixed media collage that I made back in high school – can you tell that I may have been inspired by Picasso at the time? Growing up, I was an aspiring writer. I was constantly scribbling poetry and stories in spiral notebooks, so it was only fitting that I made a work of art inspired by my life as a writer. This piece is made of magazine clippings, oil pastel, pen, and includes an actual broken pencil and balled up piece of paper adhered to the surface.

February 20, 2017June 19, 2024

The Magic of Memories

This is a commission that I completed for an author who lives in California. She wrote a story about a collage artist in the DC area, and she thought it was only fitting to hire me to make a collage inspired by a description from the book. This piece was inspired by a passage that described a work of art created by the fictional artist – a box of memories with light swirling from it. I definitely had a lot of fun creating this piece, especially since it was a little different from what I normally make.

February 9, 2017June 8, 2024

Feeling Blue

Here’s another collage that I made back in high school. This was during my phase where I was focussing a lot on figurative art and also liked to draw on top of my work with oil pastel. As you can see here, the figure was drawn almost completely in oil pastel. There was actually cut paper underneath all that drawing. It was during this phase when one of my classmates asked me why I always covered up all my hard work by drawing on top of it. It was at that point that I realized I should try to make works completely from paper – and see how I could accomplish adding shadows and highlights just by manipulating cut pieces of magazine strips.