Author: saravipond

Unit 1 is organized into four assignments, each is on a separate page below.

ASSIGNMENT A: Technique Exploration

I made 4 small experiments in class Week 1 – see below with technique descriptions.

… and at home worked on several other ideas, as follows:

Pouring, plus… the pouring part was kind of a failure – didn’t get the quantities of paint and ink right on my first tries, and then suddenly all the acrylic medium was used up. At any rate, I decided to see what I could create by overpainting. Forgot to take photos of the original pours before I added other stuff on top and cut them up into pieces. The first two are small sections (7×9 and 6×6) of a larger pour that had flecks of unmixed paint throughout, and minimal colour otherwise. For the first, I stuck with minimal colour, overlaying black ink detailing with fine brush, and watery ink with larger brush strokes. For the second, I added full-strength blue and green paint on the tiny lacunae of unpainted paper. Then applied a mix of paint + matte medium for each colour in layers over the page, for a glazed appearance and a range of blue-green shades. I liked the cell-like presence of the lacunae. The third piece is a different pour, in which a lot of black ink obscured the other colours (phthalo blue and clear medium). Used red-orange overpaint to be seen on top of black, used some stippling and some brushstrokes (13″ x 20″)

Dry Brush: A crude brush from Home Depot, short bristles and 3″ wide. 20″ x 13″

Breath power: building on my classroom “blown ink” test, I used a straw to blow dilute yellow paint and black ink on a red background. Somewhat like flowers and vines. 12″ x 9″

Texture with Salt and Gesso: 20 x 26. Spread gesso unevenly and thickly, sprinkled it with 3 kinds of salt (plain table salt, large rock salt, and black-coloured salt that had powdered lava in it). Then a fine-mist spray bottle to distribute red-orange, yellow-orange, and blue dilute paints. The interim “final” version seemed to lack a unifying element, so I took it to next class and added another pour that ran the length of the paper crossing the original elements — still not an outcome I like, but definitely more unified than at the half-way point.

Burnt Offering: Wanted to see if I could paint with fire. Background of burnt umber (ha ha) with swirls of red/orange here and there, and burned the centre or environs of each swirl to see what marks I could make. The unpainted side perhaps more interesting in the end!

Sept 11 in-class Technical Exercise: multiple techniques/styles self portrait. Dry Brush, Paper towel, Blend on paper, Escrito, Paint Scraper Minimalist, Many fine small lines.