Part 2 Playing with Materials

Some of the media suggested in the introduction to Part 2 aren't very familiar to me so I'm going to try them out before I need to actually use them in a project.

Water soluble pencil crayon

Water soluble pencil crayon

These are mixed in a variety of combinations but I found it hard to achieve a smooth effect.  I always seem to see pencil marks.

Inks

Wet on dry inks

I used a brush to see what my colours were like and what marks I could make.  Overall I'm delighted with the colours and the range of effects I can achieve with just one brush.  I need much more practise to be able to reproduce the lovely green line on the right.  Try as I  might I couldn't do it again.

I wondered what the effect would be if I used a dropper to put ink onto wet paper. I used heavy cartridge paper.  Because it was wet my paper warped and I got puddles. I'd forgotten about the existence of blotting paper.  Stupidly I tried to dry it with my hairdryer and my colours made mud and flowed all over the place. 

Wet on wet inks

Wet on wet inks

  However, if I use less water it might be better.

Wet on very slightly wet

I used block watercolour paper and this was marginally better.  I restricted my palate but found the ultramarine too strong.  I made my drips from higher up and got more variety of shapes.

I tried again this time with no water at all and cobalt blue which was better than ultramarine.  This time there was much less mixing although I could persuade it with accurate positioning of the drips.  When it was half dry I dripped some oil on just to see what happened and it dispersed the colour and changed it.

Wet on dry with cobalt

Oil pastels

Oil pastels

I used a short length of oil pastel to make a convoluted line from the top to the bottom of my A4 sketchbook them repeated it time and time again.  The last few strokes were horizontal.  It's just a doodle really. The white page show through and there's lots of texture.

I tried using thinners to blend my colours:

Oil based pastels and thinners to blend

At the top I used a small brush and the colour became a flat block.  In the middle I tried a cotton bud and light strokes and the colours blended well.  I the past I've used my fingers and not been happy with the result. Thinners seems to offer more control and therefore be more useful in tight spaces.

Soft pastels

There are various experiments here;

• spots of red overlaid with yellow and smudged (top left)
• different placement of colour (top right)
• seeing how far I could stretch colour (bottom left)
• pulling colour in opposite directions (bottom right)

Soft pastel

Afterwards I painted some water on the pastels and got solid colour.