ACA

A2: Proj4 - stage 2 - experimenting with techniques

Note: this section is not numbered as a separate Project, but it had Stages 1-2, so I've called it Proj4z on my blog to keep the posts ordering in order.

in this exercise, I experimented with lots of printing techniques.

blotted line printing
I like this sort of printing as it is a style that Andy Warhol used during his early commercial art career. he used to print multiple versions of his drawings for clients and colour them in different colours to show them. this helped him to get more work, as he had multiple options for his clients.

it's fairly slow work. you draw an image, then draw it onto tracing paper. then tape the tracing paper adjacent to where you want the print to appear. fold it over so you're working on the underside of the tracing paper. then apply ink to the drawing on the tracing paper. and then fold it back onto the page, and it prints the lines. it also leaves "blotted lines" ie lines made up of small dots and ink blobs. you should only ink a small section at a time as the ink dries quickly so you can only "print" a small section at a time.

A2: Proj4 Stage 2 - exercise 4

for this exercise, I drew my ink bottle in various materials

A2: Proj4 Stage 2 - exercise 3

I selected the circular image for this exercise and painted it using watercolours, drew it with watercolour pencils, and use pastels, and made a collage of it.

a drawing showing all aspects of the marked off area used together

once again I liked the 'ghost print' on the page underneath

A2: Proj4 Stage 2 - exercise 1

Drawings showing different aspects of the marked off area of some images — surface textures, colours, the main shapes. Using a variety of marks and materials and techniques.

original images:

my work on the exercises. I used different materials to try capture the textures, colours and shapes of the original images.

A2: Proj4 Stage 2 - Looking for shapes and drawing

drawing shapes from different shaped masked images.

original images:

I found some images of cells and drew sections of these.
I also liked the "ghost imprint" on the page underneath so I've included these here.

A2: Project4 Stage 1 - Introduction and preparation

"making space move" in order to develop your eye for design — arrange black squares on a framed page
peaceful vs creating tension

When I was in my early 20s I used to read many books about Andy Warhol. One is "Warhol" by David Bourdon. I picked it up again today and started reading / flipping through it again. I love Warhol's early commercial work — he developed a technique called "blottled line" printing. so, wanting to know more about it, I searched the net and found the following links:

Blotted Line — Learn Warhol's Commercial Illustration Technique from The Andy Warhol Museum website. they had a video too — I won't embed it as it's a private video, but it's useful to see how the technique is done. I also found a class instruction sheet for blotted line drawing.

Assignment 2: Stage 6 Combining textures and colour effects - exercise 1

from the class notes:

"Choose a background fabric – white, black or a primary colour. Choose threads – perhaps primary colours of equal intensity. If possible find the same colour in different yarns or ribbons – matt, shiny and textured. Try working them together, mixing them and separating them. Make the knots very dense so that the background is not visible. Then work further apart so the background has its own effect on the colours. Add a third colour (different from the background or yarn), maybe a secondary colour."

Assignment 2: Stage 6 Combining textures and colour effects - exercise 2

This time we had to use pastel colours and "[m]ix the colours so that a gradual colour movement occurs across the sample".

I don't really like pastel colours much, but I was happy with the final piece / sample.

the photo shows both exercises:

 
review
were you able to mix and match colours accurately?
yes, I think I was able to colour match the original colours after mixing the paints. I enjoyed the colour mixing and colour exploration exercises. it was great to see how the combinations of colours created other colours, and the variations you can create by changing the quantities of the source colours.

some more theme ideas... hearts, suns or bees

I've started doing an online stitching class called whispering hearts with Jude Hill. it's a really great class — I've read through all the posts from when the class was run live in 2011, and will listen to the audio "whisperings" and watch the videos in the next few weeks when I have a better internet connection. the theme is hearts. it's great to see Jude go through the process of doodling ideas in a sketchbook, make some small stitched fabric samplers and then stitch the final selections into a larger piece. this is what I'll have to do for my theme work for class (I think).

I like the hearts theme too — I'm not really into pink and girly colours and hearts but after seeing some that Jude made and some of the ideas around them I think it's good to try something out of my comfort zone of technology-based topics.

A2: Stage 5 Coloured stitches

create stitch samples similar to using some of these suggestions for this exercise:

• build up solid masses of one colour against the second colour
• change the proportions of colour
• isolate one colour against a mass of the second colour
• alternate the colours in varying proportions
• vary the distance between lines so that the background plays a part in making the colours appear to change.

Assignment 2: Stage 4 Colour moods and themes - exercise 2

make a colour bag of fabric and paper based on colours and tones that I like.

Look for:

• close tones within any one colour
• complementary and contrasting colours
• saturated and un- or desaturated ranges of colour.

Assignment 2: Stage 4 Colour moods and themes - exercise 1

this exercise is to discover my "intuitive responses to colour, [my] likes and dislikes, [my] personal colour 'feel'". in exercise 1, I had to paint colours to match 3 pairs of words.

active | passive :

bright | dull :

sad | happy :

Assignment 2: Stage 3 Recording colours accurately - exercise 4

this exercise involved colour mixing and matching of real objects.

the first one I did was (half of) a pair of pliers, using watercolours:
a photo of the original

watercolours painting

the second one was a lemon, using guache paints:

months later (in August 2014), after doing a couple of short online classes with Carla Sonheim and in this case Fred Lisaius, and after doing many more paint and colour exercises in my sketch book / work book, I had painted "A pair of pears" which I think is a similar exercise to this one. I think this is much improved — I'm finally getting the hang of watercolours.

this is the original picture:

and this is the watercolour painting I made. I used new Schmincke and Winsor & Newton pan watercolours and mixed the colours. Fred explained how to do the colours in layers and had use use "wet on wet" technique. at times this was causing me problems, so I returned to Carla's "wet on dry" technique and then I found a way of getting more control of the blending once the paint had dried a bit. I like the painting so much I've dropped it off at the framers to be framed.

Assignment 2: Stage 3 Recording colours accurately - exercise 3

This exercise was similar to the previous one, though we used a postcard (or image) instead of a piece of fabric. we had to mix the colours and paint them to record the colours used in the image/postcard

this was done using watercolours also, as it's all I had with me at the time: