Experiments with traditional media
Experiments with non standard materials
I wandered round the garden and picked up a daffodil,
some grape hyacinths, a sprig of rosemary and a piece of eucalyptus bark.
Only the rosemary and the hyacinth made a mark.
Lots of people paint with coffee so I tried tea but even letting the bag steep for ages and reducing the resultant liquid in a saucepan it didn't become a very strong colour. I read that you can stabilise it with gum arabic but I'm underwhelmed by the colour so I can't see that it's worth it.
I did enjoy experimenting with carrot water so I bought a red cabbage and boiled it up which makes a pinky purple colour which becomes more of the blue spectrum of purple as it dries
As it covers everything with colour I shredded some more raw cabbage with a sheet of paper on my chopping board
This might have some potential. Turned upside down it looks like a forest so I added some hikers.
I wondered of the colour change as it dried was due to the heating process so I liquidised some raw cabbage and lay it out on a tray then laid a sheet of paper over it and pressed down in a random fashion to transfer the colour.
Then I added a little white vinegar to wash the colour off and make some "ink"
I painted this on some undyed canvas to see if the colour changed due to reaction with the paper. It is less blue and more purple.
I flicked and sprayed my inks onto paper
then drew into them when they had dried with fine liner
and on a bigger sheet chased the wet droplets around with a hairdryer
Drawing with a hairdryer. I like the effect, it's impossible to control but maybe with practice...? That said maybe the whole point is not to have control?
Some more sketchbook work:
On the left brush strokes with added tails to make them look like leaves or seedpods. On the right I copied drawings made while watching a video of a talk by Gosia Wlodarczak and used my "ink" to add some colour.
I worked into some of the random marks. This was a drawing of the eucalyptus tree in my garden at dusk made with felt tip pens and fine liners over a sweep of colour. I added some "ink" that had burnt to represent a smaller bush. I have rotated the original drawing 90 degrees anticlockwise and it looks more interesting and a bit abstract.
I flicked colour at paper then drew petals around it when it was dry
Made a wash of tea in my sketchbook then drew over it and closed my sketchbook over some splashed colour. The bottom shape looked like bird so I used splashed "ink" and a hairdryer to make the wings and tail feathers.
Icing can be used to draw
Interestingly the lines developed bubbles as they dried
On the advice of other students in the Drawing 2 discussion group I've been reading Will Gompertz's excellent book What are you looking at? Although it wasn't much appreciated by the Guardian's reviewer I found it very helpful at putting artists and movements into context. I had long suspected that lots of things would make more sense if they were introduced in chronological order and I knew what the artist was reacting to.
Amongst the artists I was introduced to was Lucio Fontana and I realised that it was possible to draw by cutting into the paper. This sort of links to the last project where I was scratching away the surface to make drawings. I glued some scrap sugar paper onto card and drew with a scalpel blade.
This is based on the leaves of the eucalyptus tree outside. Maybe the paper doesn't need to be glued down although it helps to stop the top surface from ripping as it is cut. This is taken much further by Jessica Palmer and Akira Nagoya
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