Featured Artist: Joseph Cornell

Joseph Cornell was an assemblage artist. He created boxed assemblages by filling shadow boxes with found objects and covering them with a glass pane. Cornell tried to create visual poetry by combining beautiful everyday objects he found in bookshops and thrift stores. His pieces used the surrealist technique of irrational juxtaposition, or combining objects that would not naturally go together in order to create a new meaning. Here are some examples of Joseph Cornell’s assemblages:

Photopea Steps: Gift Assemblage Digital Collage

Today’s essential question: How can I use the Photopea app to create a digital collage of my gift assemblage?

How to create a digital collage in Photopea

1. Download the empty gift box of your choice from Google Classroom
2. Go to Photopea.com. Click “Open from Computer”
3. Go to your downloads folder and select the empty gift box to open it in Photopea.
4. Import the first image you would like to use in your collage by selecting “File -> Open & Place”
   

How to Move Objects

1. Use the move tool  to drag objects around the canvas.
   Make sure you are on the correct layer or you might accidentally move things you do not want to move! (The layer you are on will be a darker shade of gray than the other layers in the layers palette on the lower right side of the screen.)

How to Make Objects Smaller or Rotate them

1. Go to Edit-> Free Transform to scale and rotate objects as necessary
   Note: Do not make objects larger. This will cause them to pixelate and become blurry.

How to Add a Drop Shadow

1. In the layers palette on the lower right side of the screen, select the “eff” button and select “Drop Shadow” from the drop down menu:
   
2. You can then adjust the drop shadow using the sliders in the box that pops up:
   
3. To keep the light source consistent, copy the layer style by right clicking on the layer with the drop shadow and selecting “Layer Style -> Copy”:
   
4. Then click on the next layer on which you would like to add the drop shadow to select it.
   Right click and select “Layer Style -> Paste” to paste the layer style onto this layer:
   
5. Continue pasting the Drop Shadow layer style onto the remaining object layers.

How to save your images:

1. Click File -> Save as PSD (This will automatically save your image with layers to your downloads folder)
2. Upload the PSD to the Google Classroom Assignment