Creating Machowski's Backgrounds Using Ink and Bleach

I decided that I wanted to try and recreate the hazy almost pastel, watercolours that are in the background of some of Machowski's pieces and I decided to start off creating these to use ink and to disperse the colour and try to make the colour lighter than what it was. While this didn't work the way I had hoped it had it still created a really nice effect of these very natural and unpredictable shapes of bleach where the colour has been removed to create very interesting marks and mixes of tones similar to another piece I'd done earlier this sketchbook but with acrylic paints and white emulsion. The bleach in these piece was applied by a syringe as I liked the effect that the drops of ink created when they expanded in circles and mixed with the colours to create a multitude of different tones.

Recreating Machowski's Background Using Hale

While it was hale storming earlier today I had the idea of trying to recreate the lighter almost hazy watercolour backgrounds of Machowski's work and I decided that by using the hale to let the ink drip off the paper that this would be a very unique and interesting way to look at and try and re-create these marks, I also managed to take a short video of it happening all of which I have displayed here.

Painting Sketchbook Studying Machowski

These pages are of a separate sketchbook that I started for my individual artist studies and these pages are looking at my first artist Machowski and particularly his use of colour and his use of mark making.

This first experiment in this sketchbook is a simple one I decided to take a tiny section of Machowski'd work and look and the colour and how its applied so this first experiment is just with simple cardboard and paint splatters and this effect is far too simplistic for what Machowski achieves. I need to come back and refine this and add more layers of colour and splatters similar to my artist.

The second page in this sketchbook is taking a larger section of the work and looking at again the colour and how it is applied and this time it is done with nothing but cardboard as I wanted to see if I could mix the colours on the page rather than on the palette in the conventional way as this is what Machowksi's work looks like and is what I want to replicate, and practice to do myself.

The third page in this sketchbook is less looking at colour and more with the way it is applied and this was done with paintbrushes to dab paint onto the page and then using cardboard making swift one marks to mix the paint together and this much more closely represents how Machowski's work looks and is what I need to be practising and refining.

The fourth page of this book contains a black, white and red experiment applied with only cardboard with didn't work as well as I wanted to as it doesn't gain the same effect as before. and on the right hand side of this page is and piece that is applied with a banana skin as when looking at the texture of the skin I noticed that when it had paint on it, it looked similar to the piece on this previous page and I wanted to see if it would work unfortunately it didn't and I need to come back and refine this piece.

This page in the sketchbook is done with only a spatula as I wanted to see if I could make single lines and build them up over time to create a similar effect to Machowski. whilst it didn't garner the same effect as I wanted it created an unusual effect itself and something that I want to come back to and experiment with more in the future.

This two experiments are done as in the background of Machowski's piece is a very light almost watercolour like tone to the colours and I wanted to see if by using watered down ink and then apply white emulsion over the top to make it more subtle while this didn't work in the way I wanted it to it gave me an idea that I tried on the next pages which I think really worked.

On this page I did similar to before but rather than applying ink, I applied acrylic paint and then emulsion and then scrap back into the emulsion to expose the colours underneath. After trying this I think it really works and is something I would like to continue doing this year as I love the subtlety of the colour and how textured I was able to paint using this method.

I wanted to try the previous method again but on a larger scale to make sure it really works and doing it again and practising it again has proven why I liked the original experiment so much and I would love to continue painting in this textured manner and applying it to my other uses of paints and into my installations.

After trying it one more time I wanted to see what applying multiple layers of emulsion would do and unfortunately the emulsion whilst being a bit too impasto and dry it meant that all the colour underneath wasn't exposed as much as I wanted and didn't garner a similar effect to before, I'm however glad that I tried this now than later and regretting my decision, and potentially ruining a piece of work.

This piece of work I wanted to do similar to before I went off on a tangent about my idea I had on the previous pages and continue to experiment with the way the paint is applied to the page and I decided to use thread from a blanket I had brought in to represent as the expressive flicks of paint that Machowski does, and after I did this I wiped the paintbrush on the blanket and then the idea for 'Blanketed Feelings' was created and I did my first installation.

After coming back from my first installation I continued to look at how paint is applied in Machowski's work and I decided to apply the paint using my fingers as this would allow for greater control over my marks and where the textured bits in the pieces are with the one on the left being without emulsion and the one on the right with I think the experiment on the right is much more successful than the experiment on the right because despite the colours being very bold the way the marks are applied are hidden when emulsion is applied and I really like the way the paint is applied in these pieces so this lead me on to continuing to apply the paint with my things to see what effect it would gain me.


These experiments are done both with finger painting and I feel they are both successful as they I believe show the closest resemblance to Machowski's work and the way he applies the paint and how he mixes the colours on the page rather than on the palette and this is something I want to carry on exploring for a little more in my book as I feel it is very exciting and allows me greater control over what I do and how it looks whilst retaining the subtlety that I want in my pieces.

Museum visits 23/09/2015

On Wednesday the entirety of A2 and foundation went on a trip with the art department to three different galleries the 'New Gallery Walsall', 'The Ikon Gallery' and the 'Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery' to help us gain insight into artists work and give us inspiration and ideas on how to approach our different starting topics and because my theme for my personal investigation is 'mental illnesses.'

 I had a harder job at finding specific art that was related to my theme so I decided that rather than looking for art that directly links to my theme I would look at specific areas of artists work and finding individual aspects of their work that I liked and wanted to photograph. As a texture artist this is what I set out to look for and take photos of, and this blog post is just to show some of the photos that I managed to get while exploring these galleries.

Early Drawing Sketchbook (over the summer and first 2 weeks)

The early parts of my drawing sketchbook I really dislike some of them not only because I dislike drawing but also because I feel that as a start to my A2 year they really don't show off what I can do and that I had fallen back into my old drawing habits of harsh bold lines followed by bold harsh shading, however there are some pages I like and feel are successful but over the year I will come back and refine them pages that I don't like and think can be better. 

This page of my first sketchbook of my A2 year I am really happy with I feel that going for a complicated shape picked from my first artist Machowski's work paid off and I finished off the page by adding leaves collaged on top of each other as I decided to go out and show that this type of shape could be found in nature by going out and cutting leaves up and layering them which is what I did when sticking the leaves down not only to add texture an area that I am very comfortable in but to show how and why I then went on to draw leaves.

 As the second page in my sketchbook I am also very happy with this page, the drawing on the top having gone for a delicate pencil drawing and again collaged leaves directly over the top of the drawing matching the veins of the leaves up with some of the lines in the drawing to have this feeling of flow as your eyes move outward of the drawing. The drawing at the bottom of the page is a charcoal drawing and in my opinion the second best drawing I have done up to this point in the year, I just like how I could do it really expressively and I was super proud of myself for sitting down and concentrating on what I saw and drawing it and I also like the shading and this drawing I feel is better than about 90% of the drawings I did last year.

 The third page in my drawing sketchbook I am also happy with as the top drawing I did with pencil again a medium that I am very uncomfortable with and I struggle so for this drawing to turn out how it did I am super happy with it and hope that I can continue this level of drawing I have started this year off with. I also decided to put leaves over the top of certain sections of the drawings and match the veins up with the drawing to again provide flow for the drawing but also as I covered the leaf in glue it made it go slightly transparent and showed the marks underneath which I thought was a really good effect and added a level of subtlety to my drawings which they'd never had. The drawing underneath this drawing is a charcoal drawing and in my opinion is the best drawing I have done so far in my entire A level art course this year and last year and I like it so much because I feel while it is figurative as it is clearly a leaf the shading and the different tones I managed to achieve with the charcoal I feel really emphasises the softness of a leaf and how fragile it is and I feel this drawing generally works well all round.

 After my really confident start I decided to draw something bigger and more interesting that is related to leaves but allowed for more diversity in my drawings later on. So I decided to go for a tree stump that was sticking out of the floor at an unusual angle. However this is where my drawing slips a bit and falls down the white cliffs of dover into the sea, I have no idea why when drawing this I didn't pay more attention to the shape and form of the object and instead ended up with a drawing which I feel has ruined my start to my year and has knocked my confidence massively and has made me want to start from square 1 again. To cover up and try to make a more abstract drawing I decided to then do a tree rubbing of the stump to add more interesting marks and change the piece and it's composition entirely, I am however still not happy with this drawing and later on in the course when I have some spare time while waiting for some work to dry, I'll go back and paint over this drawing and start again and continue with some smaller leaf studies. The two pictures under this are also studies of larger objects which when looking back at them I am equally dissatisfied with the way they look and will go back and paint over these drawings and do some smaller leaf studies to not only help the flow of my sketchbook but also to really show off how much my drawing has come on from when I first did and show the examiner what I can do and how well I can do it rather than present half-attempted drawings that I really am not happy with.

Texture Book (over the summer mini-project)

Over the summer I had the idea to create almost this childlike texture book filled with textural experiements as I want to in my A2 coursework create the feeling of different emotions through texture and I decided that I could do this small sized sketchbook and take it out to a forest sometime in the summer and start a few experiments so that straight from the get-go of A2 I could include texture into all my work, a medium that I am most comfortable in, and I decided to make the cover look very old and worn since this sketchbook for me is just covering old group and remembering how to get loads of interesting textures very fast and to find out what textures and materials work with what and if they work at all.

 This first page of this texture sketchbook is a simple rubbing of the page across the floor to create movement and draw a very abstract landscape with some dead flowers found from the forest and collage them together to create an unusual shape which reminds me of trees and further reminds me of the location that this piece of art was done in, in the middle of a wood.

 This piece again has a background of the page being rubbed against the grass and then some leaves found from the floor where I had rubbed the book collaged on top of these marks which again makes it looks like a landscape but this experiment is to collage using not only larger objects but a different texture with these leaves being delicate and different colours this piece also relates to the observational drawings I was doing at the time, and to preserve the colour of the leaves I covered the page in glue.

 This page is a colour experiment as I found some berries around the wood and I wanted to see how well they were for applying colour onto paper and when I did this it didn't apply much colour onto the paper, I then fixed this by pouring glue onto the paper not only to stick the mushed berries to the page but also to make the colour seep from them and spread it about the page. This worked well however is very impractical and would take to much time to add colour to work but I decided to keep it to show that I have tried it and considered it an option.

 This piece is a collage of dried emulsion that had been drying for about 10 weeks before I found it and I decided to fish it out of the pot and use the bits I collected to create a mix between a collage and a sculpture and when I created this piece I thought to myself that it looked like a brain and that this could relate into my theme and I decided to add black ink to it not only to add definition to the 3Dness that the piece has but also so that it seemed like something taking a brain over similar to how anxiety feels especially when you have a panic attack.

 This piece is covering ground from last year with my cling film technique used throughout my exam however with this piece instead of doing 1 layer of cling film I decided to do 3 to have layers and layers of texture to almost create a feeling of being overwhelmed similar to how you feel when you have an anxiety attack and to me I love this method of texture as it is fast and is always reliable to create interesting textures and by doing this 3 times on one page created a very impasto texture and to me in essence appears to look like skin.

 This piece is where I decided to take my idea of melting cling film from last year and try it with different materials to see what effects they'd garner me and this one is with photo/blueprint paper which when unmelted is translucent and doesn't hold many materials well. However when burnt it crinkles up and resembles baking parchment but it melts so fast and creates such unusual and translucent textures which I definitely would like to explore more later on in the year.

 This experiment is done using acetape and is transparent and I think would be interesting to use in combination with my painting artist Machowski to add further texture to already textured painting and see what effect that'd have, when melted it has the same effect as photo/blueprint paper however unlike that rather than trying to curl up acetape just splits and bubbles and creates more skin like texture when melted.

 This piece is created using a really thick layer of glue and melting it with it being similar to acetape in it being transparent however burns much easier and raises in massive bubbles. The downside to glue is it has to be applied directly to the paper meaning that paint can mixed in with it when being burned and ruin the transparent effect it gets, however this might also be a plus and maybe something I should explore in more detail later in the year when I get a chance.

 This piece is created using a plastic bag that has been melted and melted into the paper itself this again creates an interesting effect but the downside is that due to most plastic bags being coloured means that you'd have to find particular bags and colours on bags to create pieces which would be too time consuming, however again I decided to keep this piece in to show that I have attempted it and thought about it. This piece also relates to the collection of photos I took for the 'Teenage Years Through the Mind of the Depressed' series of photographs.

The final piece in my texture sketchbook is a combination of multiple techniques that gain my favourite looks combined together to see how they look together so this piece is created with acetate, cling film and glue all melted into each other and I really like this piece, I love how subtle it is and the only real colour in this piece is from the actual burning of the paper itself and I feel that this is an all round good way to end my first experiments book and trying out texture so that when I get back into the studio after summer I can jump straight into more complicated things and take my art into very abstract areas and add texture to the early things in the year such as drawing.