A collage maker that behaves like real paper

Easel by Zaweba, a free and offline painting studio for Windows, includes collage with tissue, newspaper, fabric, coloured paper or a photo, plus image transfer and stamps. Because collage happens in the same studio as its simulated paints and surfaces, you can paint over, under and around the pieces the way mixed media artists do with real paper.

Most collage apps are layout tools: you drop photos into a frame and move them around. Physical collage is messier and richer. Tissue goes translucent with glue and paint, newspaper print shows through washes, fabric adds texture, and paint ties everything together. Easel is a natural-media studio, so it is built for that second kind.

The materials

Tissue is thin and is the classic choice for layering colour. Newspaper brings text and grey texture. Fabric adds a woven pattern. Coloured paper gives clean, flat shapes. A photo of your own can go in too, which opens up personal pieces built from your own pictures. Image transfer moves a picture onto the surface in the way transfer techniques do in real mixed media.

Stamps sit alongside: rubber, potato, leaf, or an imported shape, for repeated marks across a piece.

Building a mixed media piece

Choose a sturdy surface. Collage on thin paper can cockle in real life, and Easel follows that: thin paper buckles when soaked unless it is stretched with gummed tape round the edge. Card, wood panel, canvas board, gessoed panel or a heavy watercolour paper all suit collage well.

Lay a ground first. A wash of watercolour, acrylic or gouache gives the pieces something to sit on. Thin paint lets the surface show; opaque gouache covers it.

Add the collage pieces. Start with larger, quieter shapes and work towards smaller, busier ones.

Paint into it. Washes over tissue and newspaper unify the piece. Colour mixes like pigment, so a glaze over several pieces pulls them into one colour family.

Finish with marks. Pencils, pastels, pens and stamps add line and detail on top. Wax crayon resists water-based paint laid over it, a useful trick for highlights.

Holding a busy piece together

Keep a limited palette. Collage gets noisy quickly. Picking a few colours from a paint set, or saving favourites in My colours, holds a piece together.

Check the structure. The values and squint views, which never change the picture, show whether the main shapes still read under all the detail.

Use masking for crisp edges. Masking tape, masking fluid and stencils give clean, hard edges between collage and paint.

Undo is your friend. It keeps 80 steps by default, so you can try a piece in different places without commitment.

Ageing for a vintage look

The Age the picture tool simulates time. Newsprint browns, varnish yellows, fugitive colours fade and old oil cracks, which suits collage made to look like a found or old piece. Try ageing on a copy so you keep both versions.

Files and exports for collage

A .zeasel file keeps everything: paint state, surface, palette, masks and time-lapse. Export to PNG, JPEG or TIFF at 1x or 2x when it is done, and send a PNG to Paint by Zaweba if you want to add type or crop it for a card or cover.