Shape and Texture

Task/Aims

Continuing on with the idea of drawing with shape, this task enabled me to incorporate texture to help emphasise tonal qualities and details. The previous task created a very graphic/flat aesthetic to my work, whereas this task has the possibility of creating a more personal tone of voice and a further sense of depth.

My aim for this task was to really get stuck into exploring different textures and media. In the past I have been really particular in the media I choose to work with for final images, often staying within my comfort zones producing expected, bland and repetitive final imagery. This is an element of my practice I want to let go of, hopefully resulting in a more free way of working and some interesting/unique/unexpected outcomes.

Media/Texture experimentation

Potato Printing:

Results - Smoke signals:

Line to Create Texture - Pen (more smoke signals):

Watercolour / Watercolour Pencil:

Watercolour pencil and rice

Watercolour pencils and rag rolling

Brusho Experimentation:

Brusho and cling film

Shape and Texture Results:

Weaving - Native American ceremonial blankets/fabric:

Successes/Failures

Throughout this task my main aim was to explore a variety of techniques new to me or techniques I had not visited for a long time. I feel I achieved this with some messy but pleasing and interesting results.

Potato printing was great fun and something I have not attempted since being a child. I feel this technique worked really well for the task and created some successful textures within the smoke signal shapes. I really like the patchiness and the interesting lines generated from the knife cuts when the block shapes were made.

I also think that the brusho experimentation and final results were really interesting and using this media was a really fun and brand new experience for me in this task. The strong colours and the way the ink reacts with water really added depth to the images and shapes that I was able to create and I look forward to using brusho a lot more in my future work. I also think these images have a well crafted, high detail finish to them.

Again for this task I found I was more motivated and inspired to focus on the Native American / Indian side of my visual subject instead of the Cowboy aspect. Knowing that I wanted to work with texture and strong colours, I felt this lent itself more to the Indian subject thus resulting in more ideas in this area, however I do hope to focus on Cowboys in future Visual Language tasks to mix things up a bit and create some new and exciting imagery.