Category: Material Experiments

  • Woodcuts

    Landscape

    Figures


    Architecture

  • Bubblewrap

  • Beetroot tales

    Stalk stories

    Beetroot bunnies

    Other images to develop

  • Treacle

    Letter T

  • Enamel tiles

    From Assignment 5 Letter E

    I use enamel tiles a lot for mixing inks and paint. These often leave very interesting images that can be photographed and scanned and then composited in Photoshop. Many different types of line and texture can be produced using different media, and different types of scratching or smudging implements.

    Images can also be printed on paper, or used as backdrawn monoprints.

    Letter E

  • Emulsion

    From Assignment 5: Letter E

    Emulsion on emery paper

    Emulsion paint on emery paper gives a flat image that retains brush strokes, and can be scratched into.

    Emulsion on enamel tiles

    Evil echidna and eocene emissaries - scratching into emulsion paint on enamel tiles
    Evil echidna and eocene emissaries – scratching into emulsion paint on enamel tiles

     

    Letter E

  • Emery paper

    From Assignment 5 Letter E

    Emery paper is smooth fine black sandpaper, used for fine sanding metal. It has a really interesting texture that can take media such as pastel and paint.

    In my work on Assignment 5 I discovered some ways of using it for quite dramatic images.

    Some of the accidental textures already on old emery paper from earlier sanding and photographing light shining on new emery sheets gave some quite dramatic effects when scanned – particularly the explosion from the mouth with aeroplanes in the background.

    Emery Paper

    Emulsion on emery paper

    Emulsion paint made flat shape images that retained the brush strokes, and can also be scratched into.

    Letter E

  • Drypoint

    From Assignment 5: Letter D

    I had experimented using dremels and drills on acetate and other surfaces from my OCA Printmaking course. See:

    http://print.zemniimages.info/portfolio/3-9-experimental-markmaking/

    http://print.zemniimages.info/portfolio/3-9-other-relief-experiments/

    Demonic dogs, dancing dinosaurs and drippy danhdelion dew

    I had intended to use the normal drypoint technique for my image for the letter D, printing with ink. With the transparent acetate all my dog and triangle dinosaur sketches could be easily traced on the reverse.

    But when I started I did not realise that the acetate drypoint plates had a protective film. As I scratched into it it started to make very interesting textures around the line – like stitching and drips. There were also very interesting shadows as the sun shone through the window onto the yellowing plates.

    So, as I was also thinking about  compositing digitally, I thought I would see first what I could make of the images produced just by scratching, photographing and scanning before staining the plates with ink. In the end I liked these images and did not use ink.

    Final image

    This image still needs a lot of sorting out in Photoshop to get the blending, shadows and glows do what I want.

    D_composite-2

    For more see:

    Letter D

    From Assignment 5: Letter D

  • Alluminium foil

    See Letter A

    To be further developed as I do more on Saudi Arabia and use in other projects.

    Textures: Foil Armaggedon

    I also experimented with different ways of incising shapes into the aluminium foil with the intention of painting over with acryllic paint. I first explored scanning, then working with the scans in Photoshop. But in the end I may paint over with acryllic to really bring out some of the shapes before going to Photoshop.

    Shapes: Alligators and allosaurs

    These developed by accident as I was tearing up the foil for Armeggedon below, and I noticed some of the shapes that started to look like male or female alligators, so I played around a bit with this idea and did a number of different scans, crops and inversions.

  • Card and cardboard

    This post is to be expanded with examples from other assignments and final logbook

    See Letter C

    Corrugated cardboard

    Using carbon paper is particularly interesting as you cannot tell exactly what you are drawing, and the pen gets stuck in ruts and diverted.

    Cutting shapes and peeling, then scanning at different exposures and contrast. The torn edges can be very interesting as well as the sharp cuts.

    Try with chocolate: chocolate cats

    Different effects are produced on different types of card. It was impossible to really control. But smooth white card glided, absorbent card gave a more water colour effect.

    See Chocolate