uncluttering – 5 – Geometric Collaging

“Albers is best remembered for his work as an abstract painter and theorist. He favored a very disciplined approach to composition.”

Josef Albers did a lot of his work revolving around geometric shapes, namely rectangles and squares.

Works:

The way he laid out the squares and rectangles had a certain composition and looseness to it. that i wanted to attempt to grasp.

I cut out strips of paper and laid them out on monoprint ink slabs and printed them, trying to emulate the looseness Josef Albers had in his compositions.

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initially i applied a little too much ink and the ink seeped through the pieces of rectangle paper, however the seeps led to quite an interesting composition.

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i laid out the pieces of paper and let them dry to resuse once again.
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The second time, the lines and shapes came out more cleanly, but instead the ink oozed through the cracks and formed weird wave-like shapes that eventually made it to me final ices as the feeling of BIZARRE.

Perhaps i did not manage to get the looseness and composition that Albers had in his works with my shapes, but i think through the process i gained even better works that have imperfections, and that i can call my own.

And at the end of the day, isn’t that what art is all about? finding your imperfect piece of perfect art.

Uncluttering – 4 – Reduction/Ragwork

“Koichi Yamamoto is an artist

who merges the traditional and contemporary by creating unique and innovative approaches to the language of printmaking.”

Yamamoto inspired me with his mono printing with his huge roller and his ability to create structured compositions based on just mono printing alone.

 

Works:

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His works made me delve deeper into the mono printing process and i found out that much like putting paint onto paper, we can just as easily remove it. I then experimented with his reduction techniques with a wet rag, removing paint as i cleaned or “painted” the ink slab.

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the water from the rag stayed on the ink slab, and created interesting water spreads and the monoprinting roller pushed against the slabDSCF4507
By tightening/lowering one side of the roller more than the other, i was able to achieve gradients from light to dark within the same mono print. 

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I attempted to form crashing waves as i swept the wet rag across the ink slab repeatedly. This later led on to be my TURBULENT line in my final piece.
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When things dont work out the way you want it to, it might be for the better, for instance in this case, where the water diluted the ink too much that it created blank splotches of negative space. those negative spaces, then moved on to add to the composition, and ultimately be come my AMBIGUOUS line for my final.

Uncluttering – 3 – pixel play

“Invader accepts arrest as an occupational hazard.”

Artist: Space Invader (street artist)

One of my favorite artist would be Space Invader, the street artist. He is well known for “invading” countries with his pixel art on the streets.

He himself is anonymous and wears masks for interviews and appearances.

Works:

 

 

I was inspired by him and decided to play with pixels.I made flat pixels with foam we had left over from our 3D assignment.

I laid them out on a ink mat and mono printed over them.

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i played around with the pixels and achieved a few interesting compositions with just pixels and ink alone.

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i felt they provided a nice and stark contrast to the lines and  other monoprints that i was doing.

 

 

 

Uncluttering – 2 -Shadow play-

“Shadows are always on a 2-dimensional plane, but are formed cause of a 3-dimensional form.  “

I had the idea to play around with shadows along a 2-Dimensional plane to form lines for the Project. I had a few ideas right off the bat, but I did some research to further push my initial ideas.

Artist: Kumi Yamashita

Works: 

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After some research, I found Kumi Yamashita’s work. I was so blown away that I was determined to play with shadows. Of course not to the extent of how she so expertly and intricately does it, but perhaps to my own style.

I documented the process of my trials in the series of pictures.

IMAG1205i worked with simple post it notes first, forming a line of shadows while the post it notes weren’t in a line themselves.

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i proceeded then to cutting out shapes and bending them out of their original plane to create abstract shadows. in this case, the spikes cast a wide array of shadows as the light hits it from above.
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i moved on to more complicated shapes like arches that cast oblong shadows depending on where the torchlight is shining from.IMAG1234

lastly, i played around more with the composition and added subjects into the shadows.

Currently i am still in the midst of exploring this aspect of playing with shadows, hopefully ill be able to form a solid idea soon

 

and use my new gained knowledge on to further projects in the future.

 

-toby.

 

Uncluttering – 1 – Mark Bradford.

“A million ideas, without a million ways to accomplish them.”

-Initially, when i first heard the project title and brief, I had a whole bunch of ideas in my head. it was a sense of both excitement and loss. Excited that I had so many methods and ideas I wanted to try, but also at a complete loss at how to start doing them.

However, these process became clearer as the days passed, and the ideas slowly materialized after research and trials began.

Artist Numbah 1: Mark Bradford

He is known for using collages from pretty much anything he can find. making grid patterns and then progresses to use sand paper to reveal the layers and colours i between the pages stuck in the collage.

In this instance, I chose to focus on the collage aspect of his work. This was further experimented on in two routes:

1- Crumpling paper mono print collage.

2- Magazine Sandpaper face collage.

1-

I drew inspiration from his collages and combined it with my new knowledge of mono print to form unique textures as seen from the bottom of my journal shown below. I crumpled random pieces of paper in various sizes and put them in a collage on an ink slab and put it under the press. After which I took out the pieces of paper and unfolded them to reveal the unique patterns caused by the random folds and overlapping of each of the pieces in the collage.

The resulting pattern was unique and confusing to say the least, I proceeded to make a couple more to ensure i had enough to fill my lines as the weeks passed. and i slowly came to realize these patterns give off the feel of :

anxious…”
DSCF4520.1 My Bradford research page in my journal.
2-

Still working along the line of collages, I turned to magazines much like Bradford did.in his. I then realized that magazines had many faces within them. It struck me that a collage of different faces and expressions would portray a very strong feeling. At this point i was still unsure of what feeling a collage of faces would portray.

After piecing the face together in the collage, I realized the collage gave off a feel of an obsessive person, constantly finding that perfect face, or feature. It was at this point where i remembered that Bradford frequently used sandpaper to sand down magazines to reveal the layers underneath. So i proceeded to sand down the eyes of all the faces, to further exaggerate the obsessive feeling that I felt from the initial collage, making it more obvious, making it more….

“psychotic.”
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Progress shot of the cutting and collaging of the faces.
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final outcome of the magazine face collage.