I NEED SLEEP

But I am just too slow. 🙁

Regardless of process, final works and even the journal entries, I’m always taking a long time.

Starting with 0 resources.

Giving birth to ideas and materials.

But even giving birth takes 9 months.

So begins part 2 – The painfully slow process

Unburden-yourself-stop-worrying

Before I start, just some honest confessions:

I am doing my visual journal in the reverse process- my final composition is already complete and I am recording my process with all my cut up pieces and little pictures I have to showcase the things that I’ve experimented on for this project.

Still, I will still try to make a journal that is clear enough in regards to my entire process in making the lines.

Okay, back to the journal:

 Process 1 – Monoprinting

Everybody’s favorite medium. Period.

Monoprinting is the process of making an ink painting by pressing a piece of paper over several textures to produce a final image.

Monoprinting works best as a way to capture the texture of objects on a piece of paper in black and white.

SONY DSC

Fun Images

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

Stacking Monoprints because I can

SONY DSC

More Stacking

Process 2 – Experimenting with lecture notes

Prof Ina provided us with a set of lecture notes in Automatic Techniques. Many of them were really fun to play with.

SONY DSC

Decalcomania

SONY DSC

Decalcomania

SONY DSC

Automatic drawing (Chinese Ink)

SONY DSC

Fumage

SONY DSC

Fumage

SONY DSC

Automatic drawing (Chinese Ink)

SONY DSC

Sand Painting

SONY DSC

Sand Painting

SONY DSC

Grattage

SONY DSC

Torn Paper Collage

SONY DSC

Torn Paper Collage

SONY DSC

Automatic Drawing

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

Froissage

Process 3 – Marbling

Marbling. The hardest process that guarantees failure most of the time.

Tools required:

Chinese Ink

Brushes

Paper

Container big enough for your paper size

Water

Process:

Fill the container up with water

Using the brush, dip some of the Chinese Ink onto the surface of the water. The oil-base will the ink to spread across the surface of the water.

IMG_20150827_203906026_HDR

IMG_20150827_203909317

Once sufficient ink is used, use the end of the brush to swirl the water to create random wave shapes in the water.

IMG_20150827_203911264

IMG_20150827_203913347

Once done, quickly lower the paper onto the surface of the water.

IMG_20150827_203917246_HDR

IMG_20150827_203920249_HDR

Lift the paper up to produce a finished marbling work.

IMG_20150827_203926062_HDR

IMG_20150827_203928275_HDR

Except that it always appears not so ‘finished’.

There are some other good ones

And luckily a very very good one.

IMG_20150911_062021810

Decided to use this particular piece for my final work.

Just by the sheer amount of experiments needed to be able to achieve the texture.

Since I had the container and paper, I did the froissage technique with the ink after its fully mixed with the water. The end result came out with a nice crumpled inked paper.

SONY DSC

Process 4 – Crackling

Crackling: The most frustrating and time consuming automatic technique to work with.

The part of me without experience and knowledge of tools really suffered here.

Spent many many hours that ends up in failure due to poor quality in tools used.

Crackling is a fairly simple process.

Tools:

Paper

Brush

White Glue

Acrylic Paint

Blow-Dryer

First, apply a layer of glue on top of the paper, ensure that the layer is thick enough.

IMG_20150908_192821063_HDR IMG_20150908_192810831_HDR

Next, apply a thin layer of acrylic paint over the glue once it turns tacky

Blow dry the paint and achieve the crackle effect.

IMG_20150908_193012134_HDR

Except that it doesn’t.

SONY DSC

What came out was a more wavy effect than a crackling effect.

So many failures

So many different techniques tried

So many attempts

SONY DSC

Then, I changed the glue and acrylic paint.

It worked like magic.

SONY DSC

 

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

All the time. All the effort. All it took was the right tools.

Incredibly huge lesson learnt here.

Process 5 – Burning paper

I tried 3 different things with flames when preparing for the project.

The first was fumage, producing a very smokey effect by passing paper over a smoking candle.

SONY DSC

The second was burning the sides of a piece of paper, giving a ‘torn’ feeling but with a more dark and intense edge. Produces a very organic feeling to the paper.

SONY DSC

Finally, the third technique I used was burning holes into the pieces of paper.

I bought mosquito coils for this particular technique.

I broke off a piece of the mosquito coil and light it up.

 IMG_20150910_190930393

Once the tip has an orange glow to it, I lower it onto the surface of the paper.

IMG_20150910_190941770

After a few seconds, it produces a burnt hole on the piece of paper.

IMG_20150910_191016304

By burning more holes onto the paper surface, it produces and very nice texture and even lines in between the holes.

SONY DSC

Process 6 – Threads

This was a technique to convey a specific emotion, fragile.

Not much sewing but a lot of tying/ pasting.

In order to ensure that the strings stay, I have to stick both ends of the strings to the back of the piece of paper.

To create the ‘fraying’ effect, I attached multiple strings to each side of the paper.

Finally, to make the strings stay together, I tie the length of the string using the same thread and cut off the ends. This managed to give the illusion of the string being on the surface of the paper without any obvious adhesives or threading being done.

I managed to achieve the ‘fragile’ effect that I wanted.

thread

Process 7 – Rubber stamping

Simple process of stamping words onto a piece of paper.

Tools:

Stamping tool

Ink pad

Paper

An incredibly tedious process. Mainly because of the marks made by the borders of the stamping tool after pressing it on the ink pad.

SONY DSC

Ugly straight lines made by stamp at the right of the picture

To ensure that the marks stay away, had to clean the edges away every time I used the ink pad.

Process 8 – Patterns

My weakest area. Honestly. Even geniuses like Emma Kunz had graph paper with them. I did not. Many attempts to draw grids and shapes, all ended in failure or some disturbing faults on the surface of the paper. Had to retry some of the compositions a few times.

Cubes!

Cubes!

Grid that failed

Grid that failed

Sol Lewitt

Sol Lewitt

Wavy lines

Wavy lines

Its so hard to align without a grid

Its so hard to align without a grid

2nd try

2nd try

Entopic Graphomina

Entopic Graphomina

Process 9 – Finger printing

The most fun but incredibly tedious process.

Basically all I did was dip my hand on my ink pad and drew lines on the surface of the paper.

Had to experiment the different feelings conveyed by using different kind of strokes and also the distances between the marks.

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

Process 10 – Burnt paper stacking

Remember the burnt paper previously, to enhance the aesthetics and make it applicable for the lines, I cut out the different strips and stack them on top of one another. This gives a very layered and organic line, giving it a powerful texture.

SONY DSC

IMG_20150910_140538346_HDR

Process 11 – Optical illusion

Experimented with white illusions.

It is where stripes of white and black gratings is partially replaced by a grey rectangle.

Despite the grey being the same, it appears to be different colours due to their interaction with the lines.

Illusion worked but aesthetics failed.

Used a charcoal pencil to draw two similar gradients and used a small line of one of them to create a distraction to the big line. Came out very well. Decided to use the line as one of my final pieces.

distracted

Basically most of the significant techniques that I’ve experimented on over the course of the project.

Well, this part is finally done.

It took so long to achieve all the results that we have above.

At least I’ll be faster when trying to get the same effects.

Improvement

That’s what really matters right?

Now to the final process.

Once again, thanks for sticking around.

Have a great day

KJ

So there was a fire drill in hall

Then there was me burning things in my room.

Good thing there are no smoke detectors installed in hall.

My favorite processes are those involving fire.

Below are some of the techniques that I’ve used:

FUMAGE! Pretty smokes

SONY DSC

Fumage

Burning holes. So holey.

SONY DSC

Burnt holes

Burning the sides of paper.

SONY DSC

Burnt sides

Thankfully, my hall is still intact. 🙂

Have a happy day!

KJ