Continuing with colour, surface & scale experiments

During this past week, I've been considering how well my latest colour experiments against monochrome had been going. Therefore I carried on testing a wider variation of hues in order to refine and conclude the best combinations. My intentions were to find colours that were vibrant enough to create an eye catching focal point in the piece but also ones that showed contrast as well as relating back to my volcanic eruption concept. With this in mind I started creating more experiments:

The two compositions above just provide evidence of how much red can be manipulated by changing one simple shade in the fore or background. Despite that many of my previous experiments have suggested that white enhances the colours - I actually prefer the black background in this specific case as I gave the black time to dry therefore it doesn't merge wih the red which effectively makes the red more pigmented.

This piece I did quite bland and simple because I wanted to let it dry in order to later add darker areas to it with dry mediums.

The two pieces above I think both show good contrast and the one on the right also displays the use of my technique really well.

The four compositions above show the use of dry mediums over the top of wet ones which I really like, although this is a much longer process as I have to wait for the paint to dry before applying more layers.

This piece is really simplistic but demonstrates my technique in the best way, with a white emulsion background to enhance the vibrancy of the colour, a thick textured consistency at the beginning of the brush strokes and followed by a wash of transparency midway through. 

Here I intended to create a larger piece over a double page spread of A2. As well as carrying on using the dry mediums over the top but with more subtle elements of colour this time which I think as a whole works really well.

After these experiments I began creating ones with a new artists inspiration. Her name is Hsiao Mei Lin. The reason I began looking into this artist was because I thought some aspects of her work were really similar to mine such as how the colours on my compositions merge together and also the layering.

But one thing that separates us massively is our variation in medium and material use. Mei Lin uses oil on linen where as I have been mainly using emulsion and acrylic on paper/board. Considering this I attempted to use the mediums on offer to create similar marks to Mei Lin.

This was the first one I tried. I began with a wash of acrylic on the background and then I put black ink over the top whilst the acrylic was still wet.

 Here you can see the stages of the ink slowly merging more and more. Which created really interesting shapes and movements. I think this represents Mei Lin's work really well (shown on the right)

I think this is the best stage of them all because I have also incorporated some large areas of yellow acrylic paint for contrast, texture and a highlight on the limited palette. 

But the only problem with this was the out come once the piece had dried. All the interesting marks had disappeared and the marks spread all across the page as I carried it to the drying rack.

 Considering the experiments above, I created something that was more substantial in terms of mediums therefore I just stuck with acrylic paint. This was better as it didn't run over the page but the marks were not as interesting and yet again, once the piece had dried it looked completely different - it lost colour vibrancy and texture.

Considering the two previous experiments, I wanted to create something with a balance so I used a lot of water on my brush to create a wash on the background and then I applied thick acrylic over the top. Due to the water, the colours still merged and due to the lighter background the colour was still as vibrant once the piece had dried. The piece below my experiment was the inspiration I used from Mei Lin. 

Adding colour back into my experiments

After reaching the point of having several different monochrome experiments using different mediums, textures, inspirations and techniques, I felt that the pieces mostly lacked one thing - a focal point. Considering this I looked back on Richter's work and realised quite a few of his compositions involve simples shades or hues with one palette highlight, such as this one below.

This piece shows layers of colour over each other and the top coat is a grey/white tinge throughout and the only strong specific colour that shines through is a highlight of red.

Due to the idea of using colour again, I looked back on my previous experiments and I thought the best way to gradually recombine colour with monochrome was to print one of my colour experiments onto acetate and use that over my current marks in order to get an idea of what it would like.

This is the piece of colour acetate I printed which I did on size A4.

All the photographs that are above show just a few of the ones I took of the colour acetate over the top of my mark making experiments. One of my favourites is the very last one because it contains a bright white background in the centre to enhance the vibrant colours on the acetate. As well as various black marks using acrylic paint and dry mediums - this creates the contrast.

After this is then looked into photographing the acetate over other surfaces, objects and people to see if anything else caught my eye that I could add into my work. I creating a contact sheet with all the photos I had taken as well as six specific ones that I talked about in more detail - these are in my evidence folder.

Doing this practical helped me to also get an insight of how the colour will look over a photograph as that is what I am finally working towards. Concluding from this I found that the colours didn't show up well on the Fogo island photographs as they are quite dark so I plan to either edit the photo to lighten it or use more intense pigmented colours.

Taking all this into consideration I began to add ready mix coloured paints to my monochrome experiments:

I firstly created these pieces where I attempted to add just small aspects of colour just to ease it into the monochrome. The one just above is exactly what I was aiming for, perfect monochrome contrast with a highlight of red colour creating a focal point.

 On the left was when I began using masses more of colour then previously with a pure white emulsion background to enhance the hues. I combined reds and yellows here which I learnt from my past experiments that they worked really well together and they also create a firey lava aspect, relating directly back to my theme of Fogo Islands volcanic eruption.

I continued to do this here, except I added more black for contrast and definition.

Reintroducing wet mediums (emulsion and acrylic paint)

After seeking out the most efficient background and foreground using dry mediums, (graphite and chalk) I turned to start considering texture. Which therefore resorted me back to using acrylic as I know from my previous experiments just how good this medium is at providing texture.

This is demonstrated on the left of this photograph:

I thought the black acrylic worked well as it provided even more contrast that the chalk alone due to the shades of black being more pigmented in the paint.

However I felt as though I may be going in circles and not relating enough to my artist, so I started using a tool that Richter also uses - a squeegee. This allowed me to create my own unique marks underneath using the dry mediums and then a layer of emulsion over the top in order to represent Richter's work. I think this first one that I created on the right went really well because I had also allowed the layers of black acrylic paint underneath to dry which meant the emulsion built up on top of the previous layer rather than just smudging and merging into one.

Not only did I create this piece, David also kindly took photographs as I was applying the paint and also videoing the squeegee process. This enables me to reflect on my work really accurately and assess specific techniques so that I can replicate them in future compositions. Such as in the video you can see that I added quite a significant amount of paint which left thick residue at the top and bottom of page, one this had dried it created lots of texture on the page and enhanced the layer. Although using this much paint made it difficult to show the transparency look that I had previously created and left the page almost completely white.

Here below you can see the similarities in tools and techniques, the only difference being that Richter's is on a much larger scale, I hope to come somewhere close to using this size surface - even if it is only half the size.

Below is the photographing process that took place which shows me gradually adding paint. This enables you to see the existing layers underneath as well as journey of creating more.

Due to the fact that I loved using this squeegee tool so much I continued to do so and created many more pieces except I changed small aspects each time to show progression.

This photograph above shows my second attempt. Here you can see that I have used much less white emulsion as you can see more areas of the page. I have also used more dry black mediums underneath such as chalk, charcoal and graphite. I have also left the black paint underneath wet so that they merge slightly. On the right is where I have switched the shades around, using heavy black chalk and charcoal on the background and then using strokes of white paint onto to lighten it. This was an effort to introduce using black paint on the squeegee rather than white

For these two pieces, I firstly applied dry mediums for a dark heavy background, then used a small paintbrush to add strokes of white paint, allowed this to partly dry and then went over the top with a mixture of black acrylic and ink on a squeegee tool. 

Once I had completed these, I wanted to continue so I placed a plastic wallet in between each wet page to ensure they didn't stick together and get ruined when I turned the page. But when I took them off some of the paint had stuck to them, although this wasn't intentional, I really like the effect if had upon my experiments. It gave them more depth and enhanced the visibility of the layers, not only this but it also created a whole new experiment on the plastic wallet itself. 

Here I went back to my first experiment because I felt like I was creating really dark pieces so I added lots of light, also the texture on this one is specifically good. But on the right I have done something completely different to the rest, I have used both black and white paint on the squeegee first them layered over the top with the dry mediums. This piece is one of my favourites so far so I want to carry on using this sort of technique to perfect it.

Progressing in monochrome - testing different mediums together

Although I have now created a few experiments with black shades, I haven't yet used much different mediums to acrylic paint or combined any. Considering this, I began some practices with dry mediums as I figured this would be the biggest possibly variation from acrylic paint.

The two photos above were my starting off points, here I was simply using Richter's painting marks as some kind of inspiration for line and tonal elements which was difficult. Using graphite, chalk (white and black), oil pastel and charcoal. Graphite was my favourite at this point and although I liked the texture of oil pastel I found it difficult to achieve my style of marks with.

After finding it difficult to use Richter's painting inspiration, I did some further research and found these images of work Richter had created using graphite on paper. This helped me massively in terms of movement and tonal contrast.

(1999)

Here in the picture above and the one just below shows how dramatically my marks had changed after finding inspiration in Richter's drawings. At this point I was mixing all of the materials that I have mentioned above in order to get a idea of the contrast they provide against each other.

The two images above use purely graphite. The reason for this is because I was trying to break down the previous experiments into layers and perfect each one before putting them back together again as I thought they lacked balance with light and dark tones. So I tried to create backgrounds that were gentle and curvaceous in order to layer them with dark sharp edged foregrounds. I did the backgrounds by using the side of the graphite stick and then smudging some areas afterwards.

Here I thought the best way to best the medium which provided the most dark defined finish for the foreground was to create small sketches of them next to each other. I came to the conclusion that chalk was the most affective material so on the right I did a piece which combined the two. The only thing I think would've made it better is if I added higher concentrations of chalk in small specific places like Richter did.