Looking for layers

As I had mentioned in my last post,  I missed my paint brush. Well once I had used one again to create expressive marks, I felt that something else was still missing. After thinking for some while and searching through my blog and sketchbook I realised that I haven't used any of my own photography in a long time. Without sounding dramatic, I was shocked, I love photography and couldn't wait to start using it within my art so I was baffled to see that I hadn't been. I have been recently been taking taking a few pictures of perfect examples of layers to me. I feel I can use each picture effectively within my sketchbook. I have been looking at the term of layers from a different point of view recently, I want to look at layers peeling aways from the surface, breaking off to reveal new layers, which may have been unseen. I feel that a great representation for this is rust, rust builds up over time, covering what was visible and changing it. Then when the rust starts to lift, you get this brand new layer, as mentioned before almost unseen to the eye. In addition to rust I have looked at paint peeling and wall paper peeling up. I feel that all of this shows layers in a brand new spectrum. I am excited to start my experiments using these pictures and more. 

 

Back to the good old times

I wanted to use a thick paint brush for this piece, I have recently been doing a lot of experiments with using different materials to make marks and to be honest I started to miss using paint brushes. Therefore I chose a thick paint brush and started to create emphasized marks all over my page. I used the previous colours in which I had painted the John Wells inspired piece with to do this piece. I will freely admit that it was lazy of me to use the same colours on the same two pages but I feel looking at them next to each other has worked effectively. It makes you noticed how different the textures are on each piece, you can clearly see on this piece, that the materials used to paint was something like a paint brush but on the other piece you have to look closely at it, thinking about what it was created with. Therefore people are thinking about my work in more depth than they usually would when flicking through my sketchbook. Overall I feel that this piece turned out well, I got to use a paint brush again which I enjoyed, in addition to that I created another type of texture within my book in which I can demonstrate my experiments with.

Exploring new textures

From looking at John Well's piece "Abstract" I wanted to look at re-creating the way he makes small scratches within his art work. I had tried to re-create similar marks with the end of a paint brush, a fork and a knife but none were successful. So, I decided to take a chance and use a screw. It worked beautifully. The screw moved the paint around lightly leaving little marks within it.

I really like the effect that the screw has created on this piece, it has allowed layers to build upon each other. The simple light colour used as the base of the piece still shows through when looking at it. In addition to that the red and black blend together, which is surprising because I didn't think that would show. I decided to use the colour scarlet lake extra for the tone of red, it gives off a vibrant energetic colour, however tones down nicely when blended with the black. When actually blended together I have found that a light brownish/ grey colour is created. I would liken it to the similar colour of warm light grey, it gives a gentler effect to the harsh overall look of the piece. I feel that this piece turned out successfully, and I would definitely use a screw to create texture within my work again.

Different material, mark making

Using the back of my sketchbook, I started making mark using different materials. I really liked the way my compositions using my coffee stained material turned out therefore I want to re-create the marks but with different materials. For this, I used a sponge, cardboard and an cheap paint brush.

This was created us a small piece of cardboard cut neatly into a square. I was really unsure about using this type martial, I thought it would create really contrived lines showing no expression at all.
I couldn't have been more wrong.
The cardboard created subtle lines enclosed by bold streaks which contained a mix of the colours. I feel that I could use this technique throughout my sketchbook because it creates a simple yet very involved piece. It clearly relates to my artists work and the way they choose to make marks. In addition to that, I feel that it relates to layers well, the lines "layer" up on top of each other, I also think that I can create some really interesting experimental pieces with this.

The next piece of material used was a sponge. I feel that it gives little texture, which disappointed me because I thought the small holes you can see within the sponges top layers would create a gentle print in which I could layer up on top of each other. However I don't feel that this worked very well, the sponge obsorbed too much paint therefore the paint dragged thickly across the page, creating fixed expressive lines. To conclude I feel that I won't be using a sponge to create marks within my sketchbook again, however I can easily involve the texture that a sponge gave without any things else being added to it. 

The final material used was a paint brush. Although it's not a material, it was a old groggy paint brush with about six strands therefore I've classed it as a material. I didn't like this at all, I tried to move my brush freely across the page, however it just slowly dragged creating an very contrived mark. On a positive note the brush did create light mark when pulled across a small section of the page fastly. I feel that I could use this within my sketchbook, to create simple backgrounds.