Wednesday class, week 3

We brought "mixed media" in to class, but instead of collaging etc I decided to bite the bullet and start with messy paint -- doing simple things to, um, "explore the nature of the material".

A heap of painted papers grew on the floor under the table. At the bottom of the heap, streaks of paint for working into later.

The dots were a matter of finding out how to make dots with a straight and an pointy brush - how much paint to put on, how to make small dots and big dots and what happened as the brush got drier. And some cross-hatching (weaving?) with felt tips.

Lines and dots in various media on cartridge paper -
for example, graphite on tracing paper -

And here's what happens when you lay down heavy lines of white paint with a thin brush, then blot it with tracing paper, lay that aside to dry, and go across the original lines with a dry wider brush of black paint, and put the paper under the tracing paper -

Another transparent effect. I drew on the tracing paper with the pointy end of the brush, then tried out what it would look like over a strong dotty pattern -At the end of the day everyone's work goes up on the wall, and we all look around. Out of my hasty heap I tried to select those that go together. My favourite is the graphite on black paint, top right -
Here's some of what the others did -- much variety! The thin lines are sand sprinkled on fine lines of glue. Must try that...

One point made throughout the day was to consider presentation - sometimes things look fine close together, sometimes they need to be on their own and have space around them.