Why I Hate Art Tutorials
This might get me in trouble, but if art isn’t about pushing back, what’s the point?
Why I Hate Art Tutorials (sorry, not sorry)
Art tutorials drain the soul out of creativity. They flatten expression into step-by-step formulas, turning what should be a deeply personal process into a paint-by-numbers exercise. I don’t want to “hack” my way into someone else’s style or follow a neat little roadmap to “better” art. Art should be messy. It’s about discovery, struggle, accidents, and instinct.
And nowhere does this feel more wrong than in collage.
Collage is alchemy, not assembly. It’s instinct—pulling forgotten fragments from the void and making them speak to each other in ways they were never meant to. It’s a living dialogue between chaos and control. And yet, every time I see a tutorial promising 5 Easy Steps to a Perfect Collage, I feel like screaming.
Collage isn’t perfect or step-by-step. It isn’t about following some pre-approved method to get a “good” result. The magic happens in the unknown—when you rip instead of cut, when you paste something down before you understand why, when you let the piece take over instead of forcing it into a box.
Do I want to learn new techniques? Sure. But I want to stumble into them through making, through ruining, through figuring it out on my own terms—not by replicating someone else’s formula. The best collages don’t come from instructions. They come from listening to the scraps.
I know plenty of nice, talented people who make collage tutorials. This isn’t about them. I wish it didn’t bug me so much. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m just being a bitch about it. But something in me recoils when I see How to Make a Balanced Collage or The Right Way to Arrange Your Cutouts. Right way? Isn’t the whole point that there is no right way?
Seriously—can someone fix me on this? Because I get irrationally frustrated when I see these things. I want to support people teaching collage, I do. But the second someone turns something so raw, so intuitive, into a checklist, it loses its power for me.
So no, I won’t be watching that Mastering the Art of Collage Composition tutorial, webinar, step-by-step breakdown—whatever it is. But if you’ve got insight—if you can explain why this gets under my skin and whether I should just get over it—I’m listening. Even if I don’t want to hear it.
I occasionally watch tutorials because I’m always looking for new tools and better ways to create the physical pieces of my collages. But I’m often also thinking ‘Good god I would never ever do what you just did! ‘ :) I love collage because we all do it so differently.
I have no recollection of how I ended up reading your post, but it's kind of hilarious that I did because I sell a collage class video download, and in a few days from now will start giving collage workshops in person at my home. As one of the other commenters here mentioned, some people do want to be told exactly what to do, but I've never been able to bring myself to teach that way. After decades doing collage and seventeen years working in an art supply store (*and* a degree in fine art, though I didn't do collage there), I definitely think I have some knowledge to impart about methods, techniques, different glues for different papers, how to keep from getting glue everywhere, etc. What people do or make after I show them all that is up to them. I do talk about composition a little in my download, and with my in-person classes I plan to offer assistance with that *only if people want it*. People want and need different things (obvs). I want my workshops to be as much about soothing your nervous system/mental health/getting out of your head as much as art technique instruction. So I hope to keep it flexible.