food | Megan Coyle: Artist & Illustrator

September 9, 2022June 8, 2024

It’s Corn

Corn collage by artist Megan Coyle — “It’s Corn,” Collage on paper, 5″x7″
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The other day I decided to breakup my flow of working on portraits by creating this still life collage. It was inspired by a song that has been blowing up on social media these days, and I figured I might as well make a collage of corn, film my process a bit, and share my process while playing the song in the background. The most challenging part of this collage was cutting out every little tiny piece of corn and pasting it down. I was alternating between a few different shades of yellow, and I’m pretty pleased with how it looks. The husk is rather simple and the background is really embracing the textures/fragments of photographs that I found, cut, and then layered.

January 25, 2021June 5, 2024

Cherries

Earlier this month I made a “Citrus” collage, which made me realize I should tackle more interesting still life compositions. Completing that piece inspired me to work on this “Cherries” collage. I enjoyed the challenge of working with variations of red within the entire composition. I also worked on this piece while live streaming my process on TikTok, and I had a blast answering questions while working on various stages of the collage.

Lately my color palette has been really bright, and I’m enjoying how my live streaming sessions have inspired me to make so much new artwork this month. “Cherries” is my eighth piece completed so far in 2021.

January 12, 2021June 5, 2024

Citrus

Still life is a subject that I generally avoid. Previously I’ve felt uninspired by most compositions I’ve come up with, although with this piece, I had a lot of fun with it. I think I need to continue to challenge myself with still life. After all, I just might find another composition that excites me.

June 26, 2020June 10, 2024

Go Bananas

Another day, another collage made so I could put together a time lapse. Still life has always been a struggle for me, so I’m trying to challenge myself by working on subjects that I don’t ordinarily work on. This piece was especially difficult to piece together, and perhaps it’s simply because I’m not used to making too many food-related collages. Anyway, I’m not sure if this is entirely finished, but it’s finished for now.

June 15, 2020June 10, 2024

Avocado Time

I’m generally drawn to making animal portraits, but the other day I decided to do a still life collage. I wanted to film the process again to create a time lapse video (you can see the results for this one below). And I thought it would be interesting to tackle a simple shape that could be made to look more abstract.

This was my first time making an avocado collage, and although the finished product turned out a lot rounder than I intended it to be, I’m still pleased with the overall look. The shadows and highlights played nicely this time.

May 30, 2020June 10, 2024

Donut Give Up

I have to admit that it’s difficult for me to focus on subject matter other than animal portraits. What can I say? Animals are my favorite subjects to make art of. So this past week, I ventured off and made another donut collage. And of course, I couldn’t help myself but use a pun in the title.

This was another collage that’s part of my quarantine collage series, where I film my process and create a time lapse video:

August 21, 2018June 11, 2024

Have a Bite? Donut Mind if I do!

There’s just something sweet about making artwork that has sprinkles. I had fun coming up with the title for this piece, as well as cutting out all those tiny pieces for the sprinkles. You can see that the pieces of paper for the donut, as well as the plate, involved a lot of tiny pieces that were layered in such a way that the fragments of paper were almost blended together.

The background consists of one texture I found in the background of a magazine ad. I also layered a little bit of solid color on top of the background, to help with shadowing. Overall, I had some fun depicting a donut that had a bite taken out of it.

June 17, 2018June 11, 2024

Cupcake Time

I’m having a sweet time making all these dessert collages. With this piece, I enjoyed incorporating more texture for the background, cupcake base, and the cherry on top. However, this collage was more of a struggle for me – I felt like I was overworking the surface for the frosting.

If you take a look at the collage in-person, you’ll notice that some parts are built up more with quite a few layers of paper. Whenever there’s more paper layered in a particular area for me, it means that I was struggling with getting a certain section looking the way I wanted it to. Although, that’s making me think that it could be interesting to build up different areas on purpose to see what happens.

May 20, 2018June 11, 2024

My Piece of the Pie (Lemon Meringue)

Lemon meringue pie is my favorite type of pie, so I just had to make a collage of it. Getting the texture for the top of the pie was the most challenging part of this piece. I had a lot of fun using different yellows for the filling, and of course creating some abstract shadows on the plate.

I’m really enjoying tackling different desserts for my new still life series. I suppose previously when I tried to approach still life, I often got bored since I kept tackling floral arrangements. When you try to approach different subjects, it can really change things up, and make something that you typical found too ordinary, much more exciting. I’m planning to create a few more pieces for this series before I tackle another type of food for my still life work.

February 25, 2018June 5, 2024

A Piece of Cake

I had a lot of fun working on this collage, and I’ve been getting a lot of joy from working on my latest series of minimalist desserts. I think I was previously focusing too much on animal portraits, and having more change in my routine helps get the creativity flowing. I’m planning to make a few more pieces for this series before changing gears again. It’s been fun trying to find new ways to sharpen my collage-making skills.

This piece of cake was pieced together rather smoothly. I think the most difficult part was trying to get the coloring for the background to work the way I wanted it to. Initially it was a more vibrant pink, although I wanted to find colors that were more subdued so that the cake itself would stand out more. You can also see that I focused more on finding solid colors from the magazine strips I layered, with only a few bits of texture.