I was very excited to try out the Guan Dao in this session after making it the previous night. For such a cheap and easy to make instrument, it was very versatile and produced some very beautiful marks.
It was easy to produce lines with the GD as it was very similar to using a normal brush or a pen.
After prolonged use however, the aluminium could not handle the stress so began to fold and tear.
I switched to using the string that I had brought along. Before beginning, I made 3 sets of strings in order to test out the effect of varying the thickness of each bundle of string.
I also experimented with materials brought by my classmates. I particularly enjoyed the effects created with David’s bubblewrap –
I then began to wrap other things around other bodyparts. Namely, clingwrap around feet.
- Broad horizontal stroke: created by dragging foot backwards, then stopping the motion and doing a twist. The change in motion brought an interesting touch to the discontinuation of the line (as opposed to simply stopping the linear motion of the foot).
- U-shaped curve: created by dragging the foot by the toe in a circular motion around the body.
- Scattered dots: created by balancing on one foot, and throwing the body off equilibrium to see where the foot will land next – “unbalanced”.
I very much enjoyed number 3. Will stretch the capacity of this more in the next session.
On the whole, I am rather satisfied with some of the things I had created in this session. However, a large part of me feels that I had not managed to explore the capabilities of the medium + myself. I had also tried some monoprinting, but did not produce any good pieces from that. I feel that more could have been done if I had more knowledge of print making processes and had more exposure to mark making pieces created by other artists.
Next week I will:
- Play more with the usage of the body (the feet in particular) in creating prints.
- Bring more mark making materials.
- Explore the use of negative space and reduction processes.
I have included more photographs below of other prints I had created during this session, but did not find fit to put into the main post.