2.4 Painting on a painted surface

Paint a thin wash of colour on three or more sheets of A4 paper using ink- or water-based paint and leave them to dry; make some dark and some light. Now choose a paint medium you’d like to try and depict another of your collections. This time really look at the tone of the collection.

Which are the darkest and which are the lightest areas?

You may find ink, watercolour, acrylic or gouache most suitable for this exercise, but feel free to experiment. As an extra exercise, you could paint a collection of your choice, leave it to dry and paint a different collection on top on the same piece of paper.

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The tone or value of a colour, rather than the hue, is fundamental for tonal contrast and to achieve a range of values. My paintings in some of exercise one, were only mid-tones and therefore identified by my tutor as flat and dull.

I need to use value or tonal contrast for the creation of visual interest or excitement in a painting.

I played with the seashells in my sketchbook with loose mark making. I have used a few lines here with an acrylic pen, this is not tone I need to be mindful of this in the exercises.

I made several A4 exercises. Some are quick tonal studies, some are more detailed with diluted gouache, ink and watercolours.

I used charcoal to trace/imprint the simple outlines of the forms of shells and ink bottles (see right hand image). This made it easier to concentrate on the tone.

Making the photographs black and white also assisted with the process as it is easier to see the tone in black and white images.

Forks, make up and wires.

A4 Forks and make up with diluted acrylics on paper

Forks and plugs and wires

A4 Forks and wires mixed water based media on paper

Ink bottles

A4 Ink bottles with ink washes on water colour paper.

I feel quite comfortable washing and layering the water based paints. Artgraf and gouache make darker tones because of their higher pigment levels. Watercolor and diluted ink for washes and layers, creating mystery and shadowy marks.

I need to challenge myself with unfamiliar mediums for my Assignment Two piece and therefore will experiment further with open acrylics and oil paint (used outside) if the weather brightens up! I have found that open acrylics behave in the same way as oils and can be used wet in wet for similar results.

Seashells

Open acrylics and Artgraf

I like the visible brush strokes with open acrylics (difficult to see here) and noted that when I had seen the Cecily Brown exhibition at Blenheim Palace her use of dilution and glazes, maybe I could explore this in my Assignment Two piece?

Japanese china spoons A4 Acrylic blended wash (base) and Artfgraf on paper.

Cropped image of Japanese china spoons.

Painterly scissors using acrylics and more of a dry brush technique.

I used one of the pieces of ink work from exercise one as it looked like the top of an ink bottle. I painted over pencils and quite like the quick sketch in a varied use of Artgraf, watercolor ink and acrylics.

I think this exercise was developing my layering skill set. I need to keep this in mind as a useful technique.