Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Winter Workshop Day Two

Today started with finishing up the black and white studies, so I used a small viewfinder on my shell and scaled it up into an A3 page. I used graphitone washes and pen and ink. I really like this and can see weave pattern possibilities:



I also used string to draw the shell, with a view to printing from it. I ran out of time today, so did a quick charcoal rubbing instead for now.




Then we started work in colour. First we made a colour wheel and also experimented with adding white, burnt umber or black to the true colours on the wheel (that's the set of small squares at the bottom), to create tints, tones and shades. I used Spectrum Red, so my purple came out very dark - it needed some Rose Tyrean added to lift it to aubergine, but it's still a bit dark. Would be interested to try Primary Red which is much pinker red, to see what that comes out like.




Then it was colour studies. I went back to the shell and made a range of neutrals to explore. Apart from the shape, it's not particularly representative -stripes in the black and white study, spots in this! I like the palette though, and the lift of the pink.




After lunch we went into the print studio, and tried batik techniques on paper. We used Procion dyes to add the colour. I tried different paper and began to explore different ways to later on the colour. I took photos of the pieces before I ironed them to melt the wax.


 
 
I'm so glad I took those photos, because once I'd ironed the abstract pieces (2&3), I didn't like the effect of the melted wax soaking into the paper at all. The black and pink one didn't work, as the batik wax masking small spots of pink all came off when I washed the black over anyway *sigh*. I picked most of the blobs of wax off the shell shaped one (now dubbed Lady Windermere's Fan for obvious reasons) before ironing it, and I wish I'd known I could do that to the others. Ah well.




More colour studies tomorrow morning, plus scanning and manipulating photos, then it's into the textile workshop in the afternoon and a start on the looms - squeeee!

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