I used to do this all of the time when I was in school. We would mostly do it with faces from magazines. It teaches us a lot of different things. We can learn colour matching, fill in the blanks/information, and creative license.

It’s a great way to start learning a tool, or developing a new style. I like to use the magazine pages for colour inspiration or filling a section of a page. This is a great process for kicking off an illustration or a painting when you want to “un-blank” a page, or if you have a bit of creative block.

If you pull something out of a magazine, put it on the page, and run with it. You can just complete the picture to help you with your technical skills with a tool or with anatomy/spatial understanding. Or, you can go rogue. Take the image/partial image as a suggestion and let your imagination go wild! See where this quick starting point can take you.

Now that I think of it, I think that this approach might have led to my interest in a paper art style. I use pattern pages in my art on a regular basis now. It’s a great way to fill an area with interest quickly. Removing the scary blank page.