WK 2 In-Class Experimentation
We got our hands dirty, tables messy but we got to get cracking on our mark making! Playing around and experimenting with black inks was honestly really entertaining, especially when you’re just trying out something and the results end up surprising you in all the good ways. 4 hours spent, 4 hours of productivity!

End results:

Tadaa! All of that was created with block printing ink, Chinese calligraphy ink and various different random objects found in daily life! Pretty cool that with just some black ink and random things you can make so many diverse prints, am I right?

I’ll talk about some more interesting techniques and marks I managed to accidentally discover while literally just fooling around with simple ideas.

---

RUBBER BANDS
Something as plain as a rubber band can be utilised in more than just 1 way.

It’s flexible and stretchy, making it easier to manipulate it to create different shapes and thus, different marks. I tried simply dragging the rubber band around and it created this tumble-y, merged chaos of ink. Whilst when I chose to snap it against the newsprint, it created another effect: sharp, aggressive lines that made tiny splashes at the end, along with a solid circular marks as it lands and retains its original shape.

 

---

PALETTE KNIFE
Who decided that palette knives were only for mixing paints?

Palette knives make decent inking tools I realised, with their sharp tip and diamond-shaped surface. It can create both thin, precise marks and also thicker, smudgier marks.

 

 

---

LIP BALM
I wanted to try something that had a stronger slightly 3D-esque texture, something
that isn’t basically just ink on paper. So I mixed ink with another substance, which is an unwanted lip balm here.

Okay, it does look slightly gross but hey you end up with a nice, creamy texture! It definitely draws more intrigue, being a mark that isn’t just black ink.

Though, using this pinkish lip balm meant that some colouration stuck; it’d be better to add more black ink to ensure it’s just grayscale.

---

NAIL POLISH
Most techniques include ‘addition‘ of ink to create marks. What about ways to create a mark that’s the negative of the ink, if that makes sense.

The clear nail polish clearly (pun intended) refrained the ink from being absorbed by the newsprint, leaving a whitish, clear mark of whatever mark it made before applying the black ink! By patting it with a tissue before it dries removes excess ink and the mark becomes more obvious.

 

---

BUBBLES
This part was the most fun for me, I can’t remember the last time I played with bubbles! I mixed soapy water with the black inks, but I had to continuously balance it out by adding more soap as more ink made it less bubbly. Took a while to achieve a satisfactory monochrome tone!

First I tested out by blowing bubbles into a small container and pressed the newsprint on top of them, resulting in a clean-cut, circular print with many overlapping spheres of various opacities and sizes in it.

Another thing I did was blowing bubbles straight onto the newsprint with a straw. There’s slightly more control this way as you can choose where to place the bubble. However the size and opacity of the bubble is kind of random, but it still makes nice circular pops of ink.

 

 

Scooping the inky bubbles was just for fun at first, but hey idea! Next thing I did was to just gently place it down, making sure the bubbles pop properly and not end up as just 1 big splotch of ink. Turns out, it makes this interesting cluster of irregular round shapes? It looks like something organic, something that belongs under the microscope, cells and tissues.

 

---

WK 3 In-Class & Own time Experimentation
Okay more experimenting!

In-Class End Results:

---

FOOT

Am I a real artist now that I’ve used my foot and toes for the sake of art? I’m kidding, but not the foot part. I picked up a brush and just let my foot do its thing. It was definitely sporadic and hard to control, if you thought using your non-master hand was hard, well there’s this.

 

There’s no rooted pattern or rhythm as you can see from the finished piece. Fun though, will recommend, will try again.

 

 

---

POWDER
So far I’ve tried mostly markmaking on a white background with darker mediums. Fragrant powder is a white powdery medium, which made it suitable for trying something different with a darker base.

First, I painted the strip entirely black, using the still wet ink as a sticky base so that the powder can somewhat stay on and not simply get blown away, bye bye.
Then, I gently squeezed the bottle to puff out powder little by little, angling it to show movement and direction.

What you get is this slightly explosive texture that goes everywhere, but kind of with purpose, maybe.

Above is the 1st attempt, but it didn’t convey its supposed emotion as much as I liked, which was ‘Astonishment‘. Here’s attempt 2, which turned out more effective woo.

---

UHU GLUE
Glue’s sticky and man, it can get so messy.

Which makes it perfect to just play around with while trying out weird textures.

UHU Glue isn’t too tough to control but at the ends, it always has this extra unwanted drip that’ll leak out and cause extra splotches. For this case, it’s a good thing, making things more organic and untidy.

As it slowly dries and loses it’s adhesiveness, I quickly dabbed it with dirty inked up tissue and pulled it around, leaving bubbles and residue in the glue, gross. It further enhances the messy feeling.

 

I actually tried this twice, initially on white paper. It didn’t end up usable as the glue stains were barely visible. On a black base though, the transparent glue along with the ‘whitish’ bubbles and residue, made it pop out just enough.

---

THREAD
This was so tedious, I spent so much time placing every individual thread I watched like 3 episodes of a show while doing so. But at least it ended up just as I wanted, phew.

After putting strips of glue, I had to cut the thread to approximate lengths and place them down one by one. Repeat this cycle like at least a hundred times. why did i do this to myself

When the entire thing is covered in just thread, trimming and clean up was done. Those stray ends were everywhere.

After cleanup, I pulled apart an area of the threading and glued them down, ensuring the white negative gap staying in position.

A loose, lonely, curly thread was added last over the gap. 

Overall it creates this controlled mood, but with a minor fault, a tiny piece of uncertainty?

---

TORN PAPER

I ripped tissues and papers accidentally and thought oh, I could use this for something.

So I tore a hole and a smaller, receding shred on a black piece of paper, creating this effect of something tearing it open.

 

 

Stuffing the empty space with crumpled, inked up tissues I used to clean up messes prior to this, it made a nice filling for the void. Pulling out some parts of the tissues, it looks like it’s ‘bursting’ out.

The dirtiness of it emphasises it even more.

---

All of these were the more interesting techniques I tried and fooled around with while experimenting for this assignment! Now for the finalisation and making of the selected 6 emotions! 🙂