Assignment 4: Exercise 3: Mixed media explorations of the photographs

I really like the images I’d created by photographing my still life of black and white things. Having edited and presented 20 of them, I wanted to do more. This isn’t part of the exercise as written by OCA, I just wanted to do it. 

I found lots of patterns and shapes in my photos. As well as creating some interesting tonal images, I got a bit obsessed with the white dots on the black tray. I wanted to see what the effect would be if I printed some of the photos onto pre-printed backgrounds. The white areas would print as blank, so parts of the underlying image would be obscured and others revealed. While the passages of the photos including the spots were often atonal, whatever I printed onto would show through and create new areas of tone.

Here are my prints.

These two are printed on hand-painted papers which I photographed and printed before printing the image on top.

Here I made two versions of an image, one with high exposure and contrast and the other with darker tones. I printed them onto a photo I took of a sketchbook page in which I’d been investigating creating pattern with pens and coloured pencils.

Here are the same images printed onto a print from my painted Kraft paper series. The images look very different when set upon these very different backgrounds.I prefer this one to the one above, but they could be used differently. The above image is more clear and bright, more upbeat, whereas the one below is more muted and allows more of the tonal range to show.

Here I printed two versions of an image: one on white paper and one on cream. This continues my ongoing investigation into how my work looks when I work on backgrounds other than white, and how the background changes the media I work with.

Here I pushed the contrast as far as it could go and still define the shapes within the image. I wanted to see how much/little tone is needed in order to define the shape of things where there is no line. This came out well on the white background but the minimal tone got lost in the busyness of the drawn background. It made some interesting spots though. 

Then the spotificattiin began … I cropped a section of the spotty tray out of one of the photos and pushed the contrast and black point to maximum. Then I printed them onto more painted paper and then a photo of my local park. Both created interesting glimpses into the background. I especially liked the park image, in which a series of mini landscapes appeared. 

Having made these, I then began to draw and paint and cut them up and glue them down and generally enjoy myself. Here’s what I made.  

I took the high contrast print and drew the objects back in with an Inktense pencil. I turned it into paint with a wzter brush pen, then drew back into it where I wanted to add more emphasis. A number of extra dots and spots found their way in here too. I did get quite enthusiastic about those spots!

Here is the darker of the two images that I printed onto the coloured pencil sketchbook page. I cut it out and collaged it onto black paper. Prior to sticking it down, I scribbled and spotted on the black paper with some of the Inktense pencils, then used the water brush pen to make more spots. I used offcuts of paper and a bit of washi tape to make a frame.

This one took ages as I selected and rejected all sorts of papers, buttons etc. I enjoyed working with the combination of lines and curves. When I looked through my button box to find buttons to echo the spots, I also came across this little wooden ladybird which my Mum gave me years ago, it’s the right colours and it’s spotty so on it went!

This next one is the image I printed on the white and cream papers. The cream version became the background and I tore out sections of the white paper print and edged them with blue ink. I then stuck them down in the position they would have been in had I not just torn up my art. The image has continuity through the image but is also broken up by the different colours of the paper and the addition of the ink.

This was all lots of fun, but I hadn’t finished yet. I went back into digital and selected this image of the edge of the jug with the light source behind and to the left.

I flipped and rotated it, saving each version, then I put them together to creat a symmetrical image.

Then I added colour.

After this, I cropped out a section of another photo and took it into Photoshop, painting in backgrounds, then blending the layers. I made these:

I felt, after this, that I could think about other things than just spots, so this is where I came to a stop.

All this playing was so much fun, and it makes me wonder whether I could use some of these approaches in illustration, as well as drawing. In the scary way that technology seems to read our minds, I went on Amazon today to buy something entirely unrelated to art, and up came a suggestion of a book about using collage in illustration. I was slightly unnerved but I’ve ordered it.