2D line inspiration & process

 

I found two interesting books on lines and compositions. They were written by Tony Robbin and John Cage respectively. As we can tell from the book covers, they were very different in the atmosphere.IMG_2172

 

reference is taken from : Book Title “Tony Robbin: A Retrospective: Paintings and Drawings 1970-2010″ by Linda Dalrymple Henderson (Author), Robert Kushner (Author), Joyce Kozloff (Author), Tony Robbin ( Author) Publisher: Hudson Hills; First Edition edition (July 16, 2011)ISBN-10: 1555953670

About Tony Robbin: Tony Robbin is a pioneer in the computer visualization of four-dimensional geometry. Since 1981, his realtime rotation programs of four-dimensional figures have been useful for obtaining an intuitive feel for four-dimensional and quasicrystal space.

John Cage: Zen Ox-Herding Pictures Hardcover – October 7, 2009
by Stephen Addiss (Author), Ray Kass (Author) Publisher: George Braziller Inc. (October 7, 2009) ISBN-10: 080761601X
” This book brings together fifty never-before-seen watercolor images from the brush of renowned artist and composer John Cage. These pieces were initially considered a by-product of a 1988 Mountain Lake Workshop, test sheets used to experiment with the flow of color from Cage’s brush as he prepared for larger Zen pieces, but authors Stephen Addiss and Ray Kass unite them here to explore the influence of Zen in Cage’s life. They juxtapose the compositions with the Ten Ox-Herding Pictures, a series of images used to communicate the essence of Zen for nearly one thousand years. They refer fragments of Cage’s poetry and his many statements about Zen practice, providing a fascinating lens through which the reader can view the Mountain Lake Workshop paintings. Cage’s images seem to become mysterious echoes of the centuries-old Ten Ox-Herding Pictures themselves, images about searching for the path to enlightenment.” (http://www.amazon.com/John-Cage-Zen-Ox-Herding-Pictures/dp/080761601X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1442143981&sr=1-1&keywords=John+Cage++Zen+ox+herding+picture)

John Cage was famous for his music and he was avanguard composer ”
From Publishers Weekly
“Known best for his music and performances, John Cage also painted and wrote extensively. Zen Buddhism influenced his approach to his work—nature as a path to self, collaboration in performance and happenstance in composition. The art and poetry in this book represent a collaboration both accidental and deliberate between Cage, Addiss and Kass. Cage was working on another series of paintings when he marked a series of brown paper towels. Artist Kass and artist/composer Addiss ordered the towels into a sequence, then Addiss culled Cage’s writings to create a cutup or recomposition of found words and phrases into a new work. Cage recognized the importance of the remix long before it became fashionable. The accidental circumstances of this work’s assemblage doesn’t diminish its charm or delicacy. The introductory material provides essential context, but the best approach may be to read and view the work, read the essays, then review the piece again. Addiss and Kass prove the continuing relevance of the tradition of ox-herding as a format for teaching and connecting the heart to the mind. 50 color and 12 b&w illus. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

First of all, there were some of the images I really liked in the first book so I scanned them in. The simple geometrical shapes created a 3 dimensional space. They might look plain at first glance, but then I started to look into all the details and realized just there were so many interesting arrangements of elements creating several layers.  MDS00004 MDS00003 MDS00001 MDS00002  MDS00005

John Cage: the choice of the yellowish paper and lines were very different from Tony Robbin  The atmosphere of Zen as he mentioned. MDS00007 MDS00008MDS00006As a matter of fact, I didn’t get to spend more time on exploring similar effects from these books. If I had more time, I would definitely try out more lines with 3 dimensional space and on more types of paper.

 

 

Process

fumage: I fixed the candle to make it standing and then I could move my paper over the fire to get the smokes on the strips. When I first tried out this technique on my hard copy journal, several pages were burnt though. Therefore, I cut out the lines instead.

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In the image below were experiments I did with fumage

When you move the paper fast enough, you will get the intermittent effects

Then I erased the color with different things such as pen, tissue paper and my finger…

Drew on it using charcoal as well

the one below I was trying to create the clouds and raining effects to it

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I also looked into straight lines and how they could be possibly arranged.

Below was a photo of the carpet at SAC (originally colorful)  I think it looked great and kind of remind me of the scan bar codes.

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This one was one of the experiment I did. I was wearing a stripped dress at that moment so I took this photo.FullSizeRender

And then I cut the lines into equal width and aligned them in all kinds of way to explore.

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Besides, I also found these amazing art works online by Filomena de Andrade Booth. As a matter of fact, one of my line was inspired by her works. There were not  much information on her but she being an American contemporary artist.

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images referenced from: http://filomenabooth.com/MDS00009

 

 

 

After I completed all my lines, I cut out the small black papers with the emotions written as I didn’t want to write directly on the lines.

 

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More Lines!

First of all, I scanned in the first few monoprints I did. I wasn’t very sure what to do with monoprint at first as I was quite lost. Therefore I created prints with certain objects such as a scenery as below. They were very much alike without obvious textures.MDS00012 MDS00013 MDS00010 The third image here turned out quite interesting  with its feeling of movement and speed,starting from which I got to understand what monoprints may be used to create. However, the many following prints I did turned out very dark as too much ink were applied.

Besides the not so successful mono prints, I  tried out other techniques on my own.

More stuffs I did on my hard copy journal as well as paper strips

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It was really fun trying many ways of creating images rather than drawing all of them with only pen. I basically took what I saw in front of me and combined them in.

Then I started to look at the emotions given in the hand-out. Looking at the word ‘Bizarre’, the first thing I thought of was those ancient weird looking cave drawings. The shape of a emotionless eye, dark and rough stroke combined with  random scribbles were what made the stripe below.

I tried out fumage a few times before I applied this technique into the line. My finger accidentally touched on the line and the colors were erased so I decided to just went with it and drew something using charcoal. It turned out quite nice especially the colors went from light to dark from the left to right along with the flow of the ‘river’ .

For ‘Lyrical’, I was trying out with my protractor and the idea just hit me. I had a certain ‘rule’ when I was drawing it. For example, the straight lines were at different angles if they were adjacent.

I also started to use Chinese Calligraphy  ink and brush. With different amounts of water, the effected turned out very differently.

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As I was feeling more confident, I continued to try more things out: stencil cuts, charcoal, water and tape, contrast between wet and dry paint etc. I also tried splash the ink freely on the paper as well as let it dripped down on its own and wiped it with tissue.

 

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Top left was the pattern I cut out and tried printing with different inks.

Drew solid line with ink

Drew with ink and water using brush on double-sided tape and then covered it with single-side tape

Drew dark parts with tapes on the line, remove the tape and filled in blank with dry brush and then added in thin white lines

Charcoal on glue

Gravity, water& ink  wiped textures by tissue paper

etc.

 

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I liked the combination of many different materials as well as the contrast between dark black, light black and white.

A few lines created with repeated line also seem interesting to me. In fact, I did them when I was listening at a cca meeting. It was really relaxing and required no deep thinking but turning out good.

 

 

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The top one was the result of the combination of both free water flow and decalcomania

the left one below had a texture that kind of reminded me of the moon surface

These were the lines I was most satisfied with at that moment so I decided I should start on making lines on actual stripes with the correct scale.

 

 

Most of the lines below were used in the final lines so I will explain more in another post!

MDS00014 MDS00011 MDS00009 MDS00023 MDS00021 MDS00020As you can see, they were just lots of trial and error.

Hope you enjoy them.

The End

 

Links:

2D LINES ARTIST RESEARCH-ANDY WARHOL

2D LINES EXPERIENMENT

 

2D Lines Experienment

 

These are some of the mono prints I did, trying to create some effects in my mind.

Firstly I covered the whole board with ink and placed a paper on top of it lightly. And then I slowly used a pen to draw the shape I came up with previously. In order to maintain the same shape, I cut out a piece of plastic sheet with the patterns cut through so that I can trace them accordingly. At the same time, I also to see how it will turn out from different arrangements: same spacing, decreasing spacing to look like speeding up , rotation

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Below is what it turned out to be after the first print. The paper was placed on the ink for too long or maybe there was too much ink. The patterns printed was not obvious.

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Second print

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This was just drawing the shapes without any reference. It was done on another previously printed drawing.

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Following was the second print from the above mono print. The lines looked a bit glowing with the contrast of the background. I also created some black circles by pressing a tape roll when printing.

 

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This was done using glue+ink MDS00026

Tissue + brush (first print)MDS00027

Second print showed more texture and details

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Links:

 

MORE LINES!

2D LINES ARTIST RESEARCH-ANDY WARHOL