I have been experimenting with different mediums and surfaces. I experimented with using clay to make the fungi circle shapes I have used throughout my process however the airdry clay I used started cracking and breaking apart as it dried so I have decided against using this process in my future works. I have also tried carving shapes and grids out of soap, I think this is a really interesting medium to work with and I would like to explore this further. I am going to try painting over the soap first then carving out shapes and patterns. The last surface I tried was cardboard and plaster. I used my draped fabric images as an inspiration for the pattern of the plaster. I then decided to paint it red and orange to fit into the bright colour scheme I have created through my work.
I have been looking at the artist Grace Wright for inspiration for the thicker swirled paintings. I have been enjoying using this technique however I still need to work on this as I have found that it’s hard to balance getting a full coverage on the paper and not mixing all the colours together. I have also tried painting on clear plastic and scraping out a rough image of my draped fabric. I found that this piece was really interesting when you hold it up to the light as you can see all the texture from when I was using a palette knife to apply the paint. after looking back at my previous works, I found that I was really interested in using more of the thick spreading paint with a palette knife. I have decided to bring this technique through more and combine it with the vibrant colours that I have also been using. In the last photo, I have tried combining the colourful fungi circles with the drawing of the tin can. I have tried to recreate the shape of the tin can with the circles but I don’t think this came out very clearly.
These two techniques have probably been my favourites to use so far. For the thick piping paint, I decided to combine the piping technique with the spreading with a palette knife technique and I think this came out quite well. I also used the bright primary colours that I have been using so far in my other paintings. As I was trying to thicken the paint in order to keep the shapes and volume of the paint, I was mixing the paint with flour but I don’t think I quite added enough flour as some of the colours sunk a bit as they were drying. The other technique I enjoyed was cutting out different shapes, sticking them down on paper and then spray painting over them to create these patterns on the paper. I have used a range of different bright colours and experimented with flat colours as well as mixing the colours and making lines. I think these spray-painted works look good put next to each other and I think they could make good backgrounds to layer different patterns and lines over.