Experiment

I had done a few experiments on top of my collagraph which had no let the image show through very well at all, i used a mixture of mediums: watercolour pencils and watercolour paints, to get the effect I was looking for.

More primary sources

These pictures had been taken in previous family vacations, which took place a few years ago as well as last year within the Philippines.

Primary sources (Photography)

Third artist research/colour study

For my third and final artist analysis and colour study for this unit I had chosen Julia Manning. She as an artist with a passion for wildlife and nature, one who likes to create pieces surrounding different aspects of the natural world, We were required to chose a print making artist for our last chosen artist, which is what I had done. 

She tends to work with Somerset Printmaking papers and is starting to go into using Japanese papers as well for her prints.

She often uses an extremely large press for her collagraphs, collagraphing is a printmaking technique she often uses, this press creates pieces which are 150 cm by 100 cm. She can use this for thick wood cuts all the way to copper etching plates.

Her plates tend to go in and out of ferric chloride, as this helps her to reach the effect she is after.

                          

For the colour study of our printmaking artist, we had a choice of using different mediums instead of printing. I had decided to go with watercolour, as i find it to be the best medium for blending colours along with printing being slightly difficult as I do not necessarily have all equipment required but I do always have paints on hand.

Print making

We had done quite a few lessons on print making. We had never done collagraph printmaking before, however we had worked with styrofoam/foam printing before. Collagraph printing is a very unique printmaking technique, where you create a collagraph plate first using various materials such as cardboard, then move onto applying oil or water based ink paints using cloth. Finally using damp paper to press the plate onto the paper using a press. Styrofoam stamping/printmaking is a bit of an easier process, where you draw a design onto a piece of styrofoam then apply ink paints on top with a roller and firmly, using a clean roller, roll/press the design onto a piece of paper.

On the left is an example of a styrofoam print of a feather turning into birds flying, symbolising that nature is all connected and a single feather can have a whole story behind it.

We had collected quite a few primary sources pictures during the lessons to use for our collagraph plate:

The above pictures were ones taken of seafood, these were the ones that I had found most interesting which led me to use the shrimp, crab and fish to create my plate. I had used black inks as well as coloured ones to creates these prints. I used more blue colours as I found this to represent the sea creatures best as it is the colour of water/ocean/sea.

As well as the plates, I had also gone in and created a simple styrofoam print of a rose, and used slight gold and red inks to stamp this.

                           

Along with all of these images taken, we had also the option of using fruits and vegetables. I had not chosen to include these as I personally love seafood and water, as well as I am an Aquarius. So, I find that it is important to have a piece of yourself represented within your work, resulting in my want to use the seafood instead of the fruits and vegetables. Despite this, I had taken a few shots of them:

              

With all of these pictures/photographs I had played around with composition, positioning the pieces around trying to find the perfect arrangement. As well as I had taken some images with flash and other without, playing around with different light intensities.

I found that the images taken in the dark (where lights within the art room were off) using flash were the prettiest.

Second Artist research/colour study

For my second artist analysis/colour study I had chosen Georgia O' Keefe, she was an extremely inspirational and admirable artist, who had made large contribution to American modernized art. She had created various floral, city landscape along with skull paintings.

For the colour study I had decided to chose a floral/flower painting of hers. So I had gone on a search to find the prefect piece for me do my colour study on. I had found the above three pieces quite spectacular, however I was most captivated by 'Jimson Weed' (on the right).

Design of textiles

We had briefly taken a look at design of textiles. There are 5 major textile design which exist, they are: diagonal, horizontal, vertical, half drop and finally all over.

• Diagonal: this design is done diagonally across the textile.
• Horizontal: this one is horizontally made.
• Vertical: this is a vertically design textile.
• Half-drop: a half-drop is when there is a design then no design then design the no design and so on.
• All over: randomly placed design.

I had created a slight diagonal design using inspiration of tree bark.