Week 10 - Printing With Plastic

This week we followed an exercise from my book Celebrate Your Creative Self by Mary Todd Beam - have found quite a lot of good exercises in this book to expand our knowledge by using different items, like the tissue paper and aluminum foil challenges.

The first layer is just a coat of dark blue mixed with black, then a very wet wash of white gesso - into this I laid some geometric shapes I cut out of a plastic painting drop sheet. After drying and removing the plastic the first picture is what I ended up with.

I wanted to try some new acrylic paints by Matisse - a transparent yellow oxide and transparent venetian red as well as quinacridone/nickel azzo gold by Golden. I loved the look of all these paints and went in with a few coats. I left a couple of areas and decided to paint these with ultramarine blue for contrast and didn't like it at all. I felt like all the attention was centered on the blue and not on the printed shapes. So I painted a white wash over the blue and covered it with more plastic to create some extra texture. While creating this whole painting I was looking at it horizontally and when I turned it vertical I saw two prehistoric creatures with eyes - just like you see on cave walls! So this is what my painting became. I put washes of the yellow and blue over the painted over blue areas - used my charcoal and smudged all the edges.

Overall I enjoyed doing this challenge and love the texture that printing with the plastic created. I especially love the fact I have ended up with something that looks like two prehistoric creatures.