I really enjoyed this lesson. At first I was very nervous and apprehensive, but it turned out to be very fun and therapeutic at the same time.

 

The entire lesson was devoted to trying, even if we don’t really know where we are going with it, we just try it out first. We were told to bring mark-making tools for this lesson. I got very stressed out by this as I originally thought I was meant to create a totally new and quirky mark making tool. So I made this very simple tool(which scared me cos I thought I was under-doing) of taking a small fruit juice bottle and wrapping rubber bands around it(especially the widest part of the bottle). I made sure that there are criss-crosses to make it interesting. But it turns out we were meant to bring found objects and use them directly?

 

The mark making tool I “created”.

These are some of the patterns that were created.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Patterns created using the mark making tool I brought.

Using a comb.

Using cotton wool attached to a pencil.

Using some kind of branch/stem.

Using twigs tied together.

Using aluminium foil. You can compare how the paint actually prints over.

The left side is the same as the above picture. The right side is an inked of the other side of the same aluminium foil. You can observe the slight differences.

Using rambutan skin.

 

 

 

Using bubble wrap. (I did the left first and felt that I applied too much ink hence I tried again with lesser ink to be able to show its texture.)

 

(I actually videoed the process of using certain tools and the kinds of marks they made, but when I try to upload it it didn’t seem to upload?)

 

After trying automatic monoprinting, we were each give a square piece of linoleum to do anything we wish to it and print out monoprints. I was unsure of what to do so I just spontaneously carved raindrop like pieces out. I then tore out a small piece of aluminium foil, shaped it a bit and left it there.

 

This was the first composition print! The void the aluminium foil created looks quite like a lady walking in the rain. However the void looked overly empty? And it seemed to flush with the negative raindrops. I felt that the final print looked quite boring, as if lacking of something. Miss Mimi suggested I apply some paint onto the aluminium foil too before printing.

 

Hence I retried and this is the second attempt. I’m really happy with this one! Luckily I did crumple the aluminium foil ever so slightly, so when I lightly inked onto the aluminium foil, only certain folds had paint applied on. The print of the aluminium foil has a lovely kaleidoscope-like pattern, which luckily did not overly distract the rest of the composition. It made the negative and positive space from the background and rain more obvious.

 

I tried another composition. Instead of using the aluminium foil, I placed a leaf. In addition, learning from the previous two tries, I inked the leaf slightly such that the veins of the leaf would have some ink, otherwise it would leave a large negative space which might overpower the composition. Miss Mimi commented that she thought it was quite a graphic design and that she liked it haha. (But I think her swirly composition is nicer though, I still can’t figure out how she drew those many perfect circles.)

(Bonus: Hey you can see some imprints the leaf left. I realized this when I was washing the lino)