Painting in the Style of Cyanotyping

I next decided t

I next decided to paint using acrylics in the style of cyanotyping, as I thought it would be an effective way to show the technique that I liked but trying to use a more artistic media than a realistic image using photographic technique. I liked this but I thought after completing it and seeing it dry that it may have been a little too bright and light than I liked for the cyanotyping. I think I managed to get the form quite right now which was quite difficult at the start but I think this is something I have definitely improved on throughout the unit so far.

Cyanotyping

A cyanotype is done by blocking out certain areas on the photo-reactive paper, leaving the rest of the paper to be exposed in sunlight and will turn the iconic blue of the cyanotype. This technique was used to produce blueprints before printing was an easy thing to achieve, hence the bright blue colour they always had. I tried out this technique using leaves and sunlight originally, which took a number of hours to expose. With the technology available in uni, this whole process can now be done in a matter of minutes, rather than waiting hours and hours for a possibly unsuccessful print, as the results of these can be quite unpredictable. I printed my images out after editing them on Photoshop, I made them black and white, contrasted, and then inverted, to produce a negative image which was then printed out on see through acetate paper.

I used this over the freshly painted paper and fabric, which had been painted with the cyanotype solution that when dry will expose to light, and put them to expose in a UV machine for 7 minutes. The paper ones came out quite good, the colours came out strong and I tried both a positive and a negative.

The positive came out very strong and realistic looking which I think has worked well. The negative came out softer but quite interesting looking, I did find that whil the solution was being washed off of it, it was also washing away a layer of the paper too so I had to be careful to not completely destroy the print while washing it. If left unwashed, the green solution would have carried on developing into the blue so it has to be washed a lot. I also tried some more paper ones which I decided to draw into with fineliner which has created quite an interesting finish on them, although this would be more difficult to do on fabric.

I do think these turned out quite well although I think the thinner lines are far more effective than the thicker lines as I am able to go along much more fine lines. Up close here too it is easier to see the gradient of colour and shading within the image which I thought was very interesting, and one of the reasons why I like cyanotyping, the fact that using just the blue over white paper can achieve such a photographic quality. Similar to photograms, traditional photography practices are something that I really enjoy working with.

These two show the examples I created on paper and fabric, the first image is the paper one, where I clearly did not apply the developer in the first stages very well so it was left streaky, although with this technique perfection is hard to achieve so I tend to embrace the imperfections in the images and turn them into something I like about it. I feel like to improve this one I could try cutting holes through it or sewing into it, as I feel like it would make it a little bit more interesting than looking like a mistake. The second image shows the fabric prints, which all came out quite well in form and shape, however it is easy to see the colour is not as strong here even though I left the exposure unit on for longer. I think if I was to do this again I would have to leave it exposed for longer again to really try and get the richness of colour that I wanted. I would also take the time had I had more of it to test out different types of fabrics to see both how the colour turned out, as well as the design of it.

I think the next step would be to stitch into a paper and a cyanotype sample as I feel like this would be a good point to start developing the designs I am already happy with.

Playing with Colour

These examples from my sketchbook show examples of playing with colour that I found to be prominent in ancient Egyptian times. The blue also ties in with the cyanotyping that I want to do next which I think will work well with the deep red and gold of the skulls here. I did enjoy doing this, but as I take a step back now I am not sure if it is too messy to be part of my final piece, I think it makes the whole image look a little too unrealistic for what I wanted, so I think if I experiment further with painting I could find something that I quite like to do.

Acrylics were a good choice for this as I thought about the strong colour that they can portray, they also work well on fabric so I think that would be the next step to start producing samples on fabric as that is the material I have chosen to use on the final piece rather than paper.

In the style of Sue Reno, I have an idea for patchwork in my head but to make it more interesting and tie in better with the Egyptian theme, I want to now research ancient Egyptian dress and see about creating a kind of cloak of patchwork that depicts the skulls and maybe some other Egyptian symbols within it.

Painting Experimentation

I do not use paint as a primary medium very often as I find it harder to use than pencils and pens, as well as being quite hard to take around in a museum setting or example. However when I do take the time to do it I usually enjoy it and can produce some quite nice pieces at the end of it. I went with a skull coloured colour scheme as I was still looking into realistic works but not photorealistic at this point. I quite liked using the Gouache paint as used thickly without water it covers similar to an oil or acrylic colour, with high pigmentation, then adding water to it can produce much more watercolour like results which worked well in the first image as I was able to use it as a splash like effect. I quite like the last one too as the fineliner outline I think has helped to make the form of it stand out more. I think overall these were good experiments but I want to move on to doing some more coloured images as well as cyanotyping.

Animal Skull Sketches

The next step for me was to start sketching some of the animal skulls I found in the Clore Discovery centre and throughout the museum, which I have already used in a little series of stop motion animations. I started off by exploring the form and shape of these skulls using line drawings and pencil sketches that focused on the tone of the image as well.

I think working in this style is a good way to start things to get me to focus on the shape, however I think I want to take this into further abstract ways such as patternwork and dotwork as I think this could be a better way to go with the colour scheme inspired by Egyptian culture as well.

I think the next step is to continue with drawings and paintings to see what suits and what I want to include in my final piece, as well as beginning some of the cyanotyping work and whether or not this needs to be added to as well.

First Hand Imagery – Clore Discovery Centre

 

The Clore iscovery Centre in the National Museum of Wales was a great resource when it came to finding skulls to photograph. The great thing about this room was that the objects were able to be removed and handled, so I could position them where I wanted to. The skulls ranged from dogs and cats, to wolf, horse, rhino and even a crocodile, so this was a large variety that I was able to photograph to make further studies from after sketching a few while sitting in front of them. I managed to get quite  few different angles and views from the photography session so I was very pleased with the final results of these mages and plan to use them going forward.

Sketching Patterns

During my visit to the museum, I decided to have a go at sketching some of the patterns that I found were inspiring to me while walking around. I used a variety of media, including pencils, graphite, pens, fineliners and felt pens, as they were the easiest media to use in the museum as well as some of my favourites to use for five minute sketches.

Overall I found this to be a good exercise as it helped me to view the museum in a different way, as instead of looking at the artefact as one object, I viewed what I liked about its pattern or texture instead, which meant that I found very different things interesting for this as I did when I was reading about objects. Similarly, when I was doing the videos and seeking out circular objects, I found that was something I found to be particularly interesting too and again I viewed the objects differently as I found I was more attracted to circular objects than to pieces overall that I found interesting.

Exploring Pattern in the Museum

 

Going through the museum looking for tiles of pattern was quite interesting, I have already drawn some of these and plan to finish the rest off and post them as well. I went through natural history again as I find it to be the most inspirational place to me in terms of ideas, textures and colours. The range of patterns here go from smooth, through to rough and unusual, so I was keen to get a variety of different things that I found to be interesting. Initially I just want to do them as line drawings, but maybe a few in a brightly coloured watercolour painting would be interesting too to show off the colours more. I particularly like the underwater life such as the corals as they all have very different textures and colours, I also like the precious stones as again they all have different textures and qualities which I think makes a point of interest to look at. I think going forward I want to finish off some drawings to post up too, and also explore what I find to be particularly inspiring from the twenty six images taken and shown here.

Artists Inspiration: Damien Hirst and Sue Reno

Damien Hirst of course is famously renowned for using animals, body parts and skulls in his work with a very conceptual meaning behind it. His piece ‘The Physical Impossibilities of Death in the Mind of Someone Living’ is possibly his most well known piece, featuring a large shark submerged in a tank of formaldehyde. The shark has to be replaced after a number of years due to the eventual decay that the formaldehyde fights to prevent. He has also created pieces of great controversy following this, such as ‘For the Love of God’. It was created in 2007 using a skull, diamonds and human teeth, the skull was an old one bought from a shop and believed to be a couple of hundred years old. It was then covered in 8,601 diamonds making it a very expensive piece of artwork. The human teeth were also left on giving it the proper effect of being a human skull.

Damien Hirst’s ‘For the Love of God’ 2007 Taken from: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/13/arts/design/13skul.html

Another artist that I have been following the work of for quite a long time is Sue Reno, who at looked at when I was studying flowers and now is also relevant to my skull studies. She works as a quilt maker from Pennsylvania using nature and wildlife as much of her inspiration. She uses a lot of processes in her work, including monoprinting, needle felting and cyanotyping.

Fox and Hackberry, Sue Reno, from her Flora and Fauna collection. Taken from:http://suereno.com/fox-and-hackberry

This is one example of a beautiful quilt she has created, the skulls are cyanotyped on the blue patches, this is a process I enjoy and have become quite familiar with. It begins with coating the fabric or paper with the developer solution in a dark room and leaving it to dry, then you choose objects or a design you want on the paper or fabric, this can include real 3d objects, such as leaves or flowers as this leaves an organic natural impression of them on the paper. I usually chose to make my design from a digital image, so I print the image onto see through acetate paper, and then lay this over the top of the now-dry paper or fabric. This is then exposed to light, which can be done in sunlight, as sometimes these can be called sunprints, but the more accurate and quicker method is to use an exposure unit. After this is done, the image must be removed and rinsed of chemicals so it stops exposing when subjected to light, this can then be dried out and is a completed print, always turning the dark blue colour. This technique was used a lot before printing was the most practical solution, whole blueprints were created using this method, hence the colour and the name referring to the blue colour that the chemical turns the paper or fabric it is printed on. This is a technique I am keen to try out for this unit, as a textiles artist I would love to use fabric in my work, combined with my love of photography and old, more traditional photographic techniques such as this. Photograms is a similar one to this as it also has to be developed with often unpredictable results, and while I cannot do this on fabric, it is an option to try out to create maybe my own stop motion booklet maybe.

 

 

 

Creating Animations

 

On our second working day in the museum, we were sent to create some stop motion animations by walking around the collections and seeing what caught our eyes, we were told this would give us a different perspective of the museum, and to be fair I was surprised by the different things that I noticed due to looking for different shapes to use within the animation. I decided to focus on circles, so started off with a basic ceramic pot, and managed to pretty much get around the whole of the natural history sections by following different types of circles. I will include a link below to watch the video on YouTube, as you watch you may notice that the circle starts off in the centre, and manages to move across to one side, I think just due to finding things that were not perfect circles I was not able to keep it in exactly the same place as I wanted. I thought this was quite a successful one but I know now how to improve it. I think I would like to use animation again more in my work, I never used to think about it, but now even if I am thinking of a textiles-based piece at the end, I could use animation to give it some movement and flow.

Watch the first animation here:

I then returned to the Clore Discovery centre where the drawers were full of objects that could be taken out and handled, including a variety of different animal skulls, including wolf, dog, cat, seal and horse just to name a few. I had a go at creating some stop motion animations where the skulls were just moving, turning, just seeing what I could do with them to give them a little storyline within the animations.

These can be seen below:

I then began to look at the drawing sheet, which instructed us to draw an object, the same one at the same angle, but starting off with a more fluid movement, then going more into  detailed line drawing. I did this using the dog skull as I liked the long fang at the front of it, something that could be linked throughout all of the 12 images to link them together. I then made these images into the stop motion video seen below:

Overall my first experiences into animations and filmmaking were successful and have not discouraged me from using the software again, I really liked the first circular one and was keen to find more things to photograph to add to the length of the video. When I reached the butterfly and had a go at making the circle grow and shrink I thought this was a really effective bit, and in hindsight would have included more of these, so I may do another video like this at some point to show improvement with the software.

Next I plan on carrying on with some sketches of the objects I wanted to portray, namely the skulls.