When you’re in love, you get this bubbly feeling inside, but at the same time it clouds up your judgement and thinking. It becomes more intense the deeper you get, creating dark patches in your mind, dark emotions and thoughts slowly takes over.
Materials used: Chinese Ink, Washing Liquid, Bubbles, Straw
Emotion : Elation
In other words, great happiness.
The light feeling you get when you feel really happy, a burst of happiness out of your body. Tried to show it in the design in a way that the ink creates a light flowy pattern, all emerging from one point.
Materials used: Chinese Ink, Shaving Foam.
Emotion: Amazement
The feeling of great fascination, somehow creates explosions and fireworks in your head, in a literal sense: mind blown. (Would have used that word instead but its not in the list.)
Tried to show layers of “explosions and fireworks” by creating the patterns with an old bottle cleaner.
Materials used: Black Poster Paint, White Glue, Old Bottlecleaner.
Emotion: Rage
Inspired by the phrase, ‘beauty and rage’, from the song Ultraviolence by Lana Del Rey.
At first glance, it looks like a messy angry pattern. Nothing is clear, nothing makes sense when you are raging. However, if you look closely, there is a beautiful marbling effect created amongst the violent strokes, symbolising beauty in rage.
Materials used: Black Poster Paint, White Glue, Old Bottlecleaner.
Emotion: Sadness
Nothing is clear and nothing makes sense when your feeling really sad. The vertical black patches against the horizontal white spaces emphasizes on this uncertainty – your dark thoughts clashing with the positivity and hope, slowly taking over. The water effect created also further creates the somber and sad mood.
Materials used: Black Poster Paint, Water, Foam Board, Watercolour paper
Emotion: Fear
Inspired by nightmares. You cannot recall the dream exactly when you wake up, but somehow it still strikes fear when you have a nightmare. Everything is vague, dark and these nightmares always come in a misty and musty dream, soft and dream like, but unclear and dark.
Materials used: Black Ink, Water, Cling Wrap, Watercolour paper
I mixed water with ink to make it a little more watery, so its easier to play around, and then spread the mixture across the surface, in this case the watercolour paper strip.
I took cling wrap, and placed it firmly onto the inked surface.
Wait a while before you actually put it open, so it sets the textures and details a little.
I pulled out the cling wrap, and reveal the patterns created. i adjusted the clingwrap a little and place it on another area or any desired area on the surface to create another texture.
I left it to dry after I’m satisfied with it.
The Outcome:
Emotion – Amazement
Materials used: Black Poster Paint, White Glue, Old Bottlecleaner, Watercolour paper
This was an emotion that I thought long for. How can I show amazement?
Then I broke down the word and ended up with the word “mind-blown”. I instantly remembered the mind blown meme:
So I tried to recreate something similar.
I spread a mixture of white glue and a bit of poster paint evenly across the whole surface of paper strip.
(This by itself could be used as a method of mark-making, as I get to control the paint and glue mixture with my brush)
I then used an old bottle cleaner brush and dabbed into the paint and glue surface. I flipped and turned the brush to find a desired pattern for this emotion.
To get some areas darker, I dropped a few drops of poster paint to certain areas and continued to dab.
The Outcome:
Emotion – Rage
Materials used: Black Poster Paint, White Glue, Old Bottlecleaner, Watercolour paper
I was listening to Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence at that point of time, and was inspired to create something of beauty and rage.
Again, I spread a mixture of white glue and poster paint evenly across the watercolor paper surface.
I added more poster paint now to make it darker to convey a darker emotion.
But now, instead of dabbing the ink and white glue surface with the brush, I “angrily” brushed it while pressing into it hard.
The Outcome:
Emotion – Sadness
Materials used: Black Poster Paint, Water, Foam Board, Watercolour paper
I spread a mixture of black poster paint and water across the surface of a foam board. I realise the mixture does not spread evenly on the board no matter how much ink I applied. I noticed how it has gaps and watery patterns the poster paint creates.
I then placed the watercolor paper strip onto the paint and water mixture, and gently pressed the paper onto the foam board hoping to get the pattern printed onto the strip.
I slowly removed the strip from the foamboard, and the pattern is revealed.
The Outcome:
Emotion – Elation
Materials used: Chinese Ink, Foam Board, Shaving Cream, Watercolour paper
In other words, great happiness. I took several attempts to do this. The idea is to create something that has a lot of white spaces so it would not be too dark, and also to create something that has a light feeling to it.
I sprayed shaving cream across the foam board in the size slightly bigger than the paper strip.
I then dripped Chinese Ink on various areas of the foam. I only dripped a few inks as I would still want the end design not to be too dark.
Then I played around the ink drips with the back of a paintbrush, swirling it around to create the desired pattern.
I gently placed the strip on top of the foam with the desired ink design on it. I actually applied abit more pressure to get more of the details on the strip and not to leave any gaps.
I then gently removed the strip from the foam. The foam may look stretched and messy.
The design may look messy and grey now, but its not done yet. I took a scrap paper or squeegee and remove the foam from the paper, and the pattern is revealed!
The Outcome:
Emotion – Love
Materials used: Chinese Ink, Washing Liquid, Bubbles, Straw, Watercolour paper
Love was a tough emotion to think of, without making it too literal. So I tried to break down the word and think of what defines love…. so I ended up finding myself playing with bubbles.
I mixed Chinese Ink and washing liquid to make a bubbly mixture. I then blew into the mixture using a straw and the mixture started to bubble up with black bubbles!
I then took the paper strip and gently placed it on the bubbles while I was blowing it. I realise the faster I get it printed, the darker the pattern gets. If I wait a while, the pattern printed will be lighter.
A simple Google search led me to a simple definition on ThoughtCo.com:
“Mark making is a term used to describe the different lines, patterns, and textures we create in a piece of art. It applies to any art material on any surface, not only paint on canvas or pencil on paper. A dot made with a pencil, a line created with a pen, a swirl painted with a brush, these are all types of mark making”.
From my own understanding, mark making is creating visuals using any form of medium. Artists also use different techniques of mark making as a way to express their thoughts and emotions into their artwork, giving their artwork more depth and meaning.
Mark-making techniques
Monoprint
In the dictionary says that monoprint is a single print taken from a design created in oil paint or printing ink on glass or metal.
Basically, a monoprint is a single impression of an image made from a reprintable block that has textures or design etched or created on it. There are many different methods of monoprinting.
Below is a video of a simple technique of monoprinting, where the art is “transferred” over to the paper after the art work is created on a surface.
Here is a similar method, but now uses reductive monoprint, where certain shapes or patterns are laid on the surface and when paint is applied, it covers the other areas but not where the shapes or patterns are, creating a negative space and capturing the shape in the process.
There are many other methods of monoprinting, but generally the idea of “capturing” a shape, texture or design of an object, and transferring it onto a paper or surface is similar.
A famous monoprint artwork would be Andy Warhol’s monoprint of Marilyn Monroe:
In my opinion, monoprinting is a doable method of mark-making, but it requires quite some creativity to know what sort textures and tools used and the positioning of those objects that is suitable for the artwork.
Fumage/smoke painting
Fumage is a technique in which impressions are made by the smoke of a candle or kerosene lamp on a piece of paper or canvas.
Some artists would leave the artwork as it is after painting it with the smoke/fire. However there are other artists that would use various tools to create textures or bring out the shapes of the designs in the artwork.
I would say this method of mark-making would require ALOT of practice and very much coordination of both hands and the mind, but if this technique is mastered it would create really beautiful and unique artworks.
A well-known artist that uses fumage would be Steven Spazuk. Some examples if his works are shown below:
Frottage is the technique or process of taking a rubbing from an uneven surface to form the basis of a work of art. Basically, in rubbing a medium on paper that is layered above a textured object, in captures the texture and shape on the paper.
An example of frottage would be a work by Max Ernst, which he layered papers on wooden floors and rubbed the paper with soft pencils.
Took quite some time to think of an item for mark making, but i decided to use ramen/instant noodles. I think that it would create an interesting pattern, and different outcomes if used when it is still hard, and when it has already been softened.
The feeling of great fascination, somehow creates explosions and fireworks in your head, in a literal sense: mind blown. (Would have used that word instead but its not in the list.)
Inspired by the phrase, ‘beauty and rage’, from the song Ultraviolence by Lana Del Rey.
