Lockdown
Today I decided to do some oil-based ink printing on my Toulouse-Lautrec works. Originally, I wanted to create an artwork that only incorporated my use of erasure, but once I had done this I found that I could do more to the artwork. I felt that they were only partially made. So today I did some printing on top of these artworks. I worked ink into four of my artworks but I have two definite favourites.
The first artwork I did was the artwork with the missing woman sitting down. I decided that I did not want to affect the actual image itself, but rather the thick border alongside the artwork. Once I making taped off the border, I moved in with the ink.
Because I was working in my own artistic aesthetics into the work, I wanted to make sure that it fit with the aesthetics of Toulouse Lautrec’s work as well. And so with some deliberating on the work and a look back on the blog I made about Toulouse Lautrec and the notes I made about his painting style, I decided that for this work I wanted to be quite gestural. To achieve this, I looked at the works I had up on the wall and found that mixing colour on the page was quite similar to the gestural aesthetics of Toulouse-Lautrec’s work. And so, using a square piece of card, I lathered the masked-off area with multiple different colours and mixed them on the page. I wanted my scraping to be similar to that of Toulouse-Lautrec’s paint strokes and so I made sure to be very loose and decisive with my scraping.
Once I was happy with the scraping, I went in with my scratching tool. Because the ink was still quite wet, and it would not dry for some time, I took my time scratching. Thinking about the origin of my scratching, I attempted to bring in a small amount of the gridwork I had carried with me throughout the brief. I also attempted to carve my scratching around the scrape shapes I had made. I found that unlike the acrylic paint I had used previously because the ink is oil-based it takes a long time to dry and so I was able to slowly work in my scratching and consider the placement of it in the effect of the compositional aspects of the scraping.
My next work was that of the erased woman dancing. I very much enjoy the blank shape of the woman and how, even without a form description, you can tell that the woman is captured in a state of movement. This atmosphere of movement and energy was very enticing to me and I wanted to use a monoprint technique to channel and enhance that sense of movement. And so using my estimation skills, I placed the image face down onto my thin rolled-out ink and attempted to emphasize this sense of movement. To achieve this, I wanted to be quick and random – not put too much thought into what lines I would do – so that the candidness of the image would not be lost. Through using quick action, I allowed my body to naturally decide where to emboss and where to leave untouched on the back. I found this exercise quite successful and surprisingly I managed to estimate correctly where the figure was placed.
I have also been thinking about my use of materials. I always like to keep any materials I remove from my artworks just in case I have use for them later on. In this circumstance, I managed to continue this by gathering all of the shavings that come off of my scratching work and put them all in a bowl. I have really wanted to incorporate these shavings into one of my works because I think that it could serve as an interesting avenue to explore. My artist model, Lee Krasner, has definitely inspired me to attempt this and see where it goes.
I decided to attempt to use my shavings in one of my Toulouse-Lautrec works. This is because while I was working on the artwork with only one woman depicted, I found that I was constantly gathering the shavings coming off of the work on top of her face. This obscured the woman and her features and introduced an atmosphere of anonymity. It is interesting because this obscuring effect is similar to that of my total erasure of the figures in previous works. But it proposes a juxtaposition in a sense because the shavings are the result of my removal of the image, and I then used them to add to the image.
I have also attempted to print on other images but I found these three to be my favorites and the ones most worth writing about. Ultimately I am very happy with the outcome of my artworks and I think that these will be the last exercises I attempt before the hand-in this week. It is quite saddening but I am very happy with the journey I have made to finish on these works.
