Mark Making: Bleach & Salt

Today I continued with my mark making experimenting and how I could represent decay, rust and erosion like marks. For this I decided to look at resist techniques and I chose to experiment with the use of bleach and salt for this. These everyday household items are a interesting way to produce expressive marks and are a good way to produce interesting layers of colour. Using my research of the artist Micheal Chase I also experimented with my scanner settings to give the images a digital illustrative look similar to Micheal's own art.

This first sample was produced using acrylic paint and bleach. Using bleach leaves behind a interesting bleed affect that reacts well to the acrylic and reminds me of growth, bacteria or moss.

This second sample was done with artists ink and salt. This has a nice crackle effect due to the salt reacting to the wet ink, soaking up the excess ink leaving behind a interesting effect that has similarity to rust or erosion. 

I continued to develop these two techniques which work really well for my concept. I began experimenting with combining the two techniques together to create some interesting and very atmospheric samples.

This final sample was done with artist inks and both the salt and bleach effect. After this dried I continued further with this by scratching the surface of the paper for a more distressed look.

I am going to continue with this and work with other mediums and techniques that could possibly have a similar effect.

Mark Making

Looking at my photographs there is a lot of emphasis on texture. With this in mind I decided to look at doing my own interpretations of this by using mark making techniques and a variety of tools. Using items that can be found around the house as well as brushes and other artist tools, I was able to produce different textures and ideas for print and stamping techniques which I am going to develop for fabric sampling.

I think this one in particular works really well. By using acrylic paint and a textured piece of polystyrene I stamped the surface of the paper leaving behind this interesting texture. I experimented with colour and layering to allow depth to the work. Because of the colour combination the marks seem to blur together and leave a cluster of shapes similar to the rust photographs that I have taken.

I used the same principle as above for this painting but I used a bright yellow background so that the shapes that are formed by the stamp stand out more. Both the paintings seem to have a pixel-like quality to them but with a expressive twist. I am keen to develop these further possibly into repeat pattern ideas or manipulated more in the print and embroidery workshops. I am also going to carry on with experimenting with different tools to create texture so that I have a variety to work with.