d’Arte Board

I am, in both senses of the word. I’m coming off a night of frustrated dreams feeling irritable, but to be fair I was feeling a bit irritable before I went to bed when I was working on these so the mood just carried through consistently. Whatever, let’s get off my petty angst and back to the art tests.

I started by making a monotype in the morning that failed because the ink refused to stick to the paper, I was a little disappointed but then I started thinking about other materials and decided to set up an experiment. First I selected an image, I chose a reclining figure, then I set a limit of brush strokes to keep me from getting lost in fussy details on the figure. This way I could execute the crude woman shape with a minimum of fuss and have something simple and consistent to compare on each surface. I started with a topographical map I found in the trash at the zoning office.

The ink bled a lot, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

Next I went back to fabric, which is what I have been using regularly. Wrinkled or smooth finishes will obviously give very different results.

This was the magazine paper, I tried it twice and the ink just wouldn’t stick, which I’m kinda really sad about because I thought these old image could be a lot of fun to work on top on in this medium. I guess I will have to find another one, maybe apply paint directly? I don’t know yet. They look this blurry even in real life. Total mess.

Next I tried the little cardboard inserts that separate the cans in the cat food box. I have only used wet surfaces, because that is how I was instructed to prepare them, but I was a little curious about what would happen on a dry one.

The result was, eh.

Much better.

When I was finished I lifted up the blotter paper and found a ghost image I liked even though I wish it was darker, so I’m going to throw that one in too.

So the over all results are that fabric, wet cardboard, and topographical maps can be good, dry card board and magazine paper are out, and blotter is a potential unexpected bonus.

This entry was posted on May 12, 2010 at 9:44 am and is filed under Art, monotype, Toni Tiller with tags Art, Experiment, monotype, Toni Tiller. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.