Studio Brief 3 - Play, Play, Play: Process

Process

Piece 1: Image & Text

Tea painting background

The first stage of the image making process was to create the backgrounds. Using the teabag itself I dripped large areas of tea on to my mount board stock in layers, drying with a hairdryer and blotting with tissue paper to speed up the process. Holding the tea bag at a hight made the droplets of tea splatter which was a nice effect that I got better at as I went along.

Using the mount board did eliminate any chance of creases/dappling from the wet tea, however drying with the hairdryer did warp and bend the mount board out of shape which was disappointing. After the tea background was dry, I had to place the mount board under some heavy books in the hope that the weight would fatten the board which it did.

Adding fine-liner detail. So many rocks

Green watercolour pencil added to
enhance leaf detail

After the board was flattened, I drew/painted my design on top using watercolour pencil. I wanted this to be a very rough basic design as once the watercolour pencil had dried, I was then able to capture detail and tone using fine liner.

Cog design drawn on to mount board

Cog design cut using very sharp scalpel - ouch!

Cogs feature in a lot of steampunk artwork and as this is a "time flies" piece, I thought they fit well with the concept. Time moves, cogs move within clocks and have a mechanical aspect so why not make them move in this piece?

I started by drawing the designs onto mount board and intricately cutting them out using a scalpel. Once this was done, I added colour to the cogs using watercolour pencil and added metallic marker and ink to create an aged/rusty metal effect.

Selection of complete cogs

Getting messy painting individual cogs

Composition - Positioning cogs 

Fixing cogs and mechanical clock to mount board

Once the cogs had been made, I could start thinking about composition and where I wanted them to feature in the piece. A key element to add to the image was a moving clock to help tie in to the "Time Flies" aspect and I made this clock using the same process as the cogs, using fine liner and metallic marker to pick out key Roman numeral details.

The cogs and the clock were all put into position on the piece and marked out, so that I could make various holes in the mount board. I was then able to fix each individual cog to the mount board with a split-pin which enabled the cogs to spin freely. Originally I wanted the cogs and clock to all move together as cogs should, but unfortunately this didn't work once they were on the mount board. Precision is key to make elements like this move successfully, and unfortunately the teeth on the separate cogs didn't match up enough to make all elements move together as one. With the holes already made, I decided to stick each cog to the mount board instead, which actually worked really nicely and made the piece loo a lot more clean. Too many moving parts could risk the image being too busy.

After all the cogs were fixed to the mount board, I could finish the details of the floating world/island adding mountains and volcanoes, a lake and of course the type in the image. The word "Time" was just created using fine liner whereas the hanging word "flies" was created using paper-cut techniques, fine liner and metallic paint marker to pick out the details.

Piece 2: Text as Image

The second image was started in the same way as the first with the background being painted with tea. This time however I actually printed with the teabag to create a "cloud" effect instead of using drips. This helped with concept of the image, as the type was to be emerging from the clouds.                                                                                   Once the tea background had dried, I was able to draw by design out. I had a few issues with the drawing simply becasue the mlountboard doesnt like mistakes. Indentations were left from pencil arkings and various rubbers didnt work well at erasing lines.

Working with fine liner is something I really enjoy and I chose to use it in this piece to really pick out the complex detail of my typography design. All of the steampunk elements incorporated into the piece needed to logically fit together, as if these were flying mechanical contraptions in the sky emerging from the clouds.

I added all of the detail using fine liner, taking care to make the lines precise. I then filled in larger areas of space using black permanent marker. To tie in with the previous image, I used metallic marker on the cog/bolts/screw details and added a splash of red to make hydraulic wires stand out.

Mechanical "F"

The first letter "F" incorporates a plane engine into the typographical design.

Mechanical "L"

The second letter "L" incorporates hydraulic systems and a planes landing gear/wheel into the typographic design.

Mechanical "Y"

The third letter "Y" incorporates a planes propeller into the typographic design.

Personal Successes

Ideas. As I mentioned before, I really struggled with this brief so to come up with the ideas that I did was such a relief for me. I feel they work as a set and I managed to fulfil my aim of creating pieces with a bit of a steampunk/mechanical feel to them. 

Using wet media such as the tea was really fun. It took a bit of getting used too but overall I was really happy with the effect and the colour/tone it brings to both pieces. I really look forward to exploring this media more in the future as there are some really great effects that can be created.

In my first "Time Flies" text and image piece, I was really happy with how the moving elements turned out. It was such a fiddly process and this is the first time I have incorporated this type of paper engineering into my work. I like the interactive aspect of it and what this brings to the piece and I am looking forward to seeing what other people think of it.

Personal Failures

Obviously a major failure whilst completing this brief is that I didn't finish. I am starting to recognise that I am a perfectionist and although this hasn't hindered me in the past when meeting briefs and has pushed me to create work I am proud of, it really did slow me down this time around. I spent a lot of time on my first "Time Flies" text and image piece. I had a lot of problems with my choice in media simply because I don't know enough about it and how to use it to its full potential - the result of trying something new I guess. This meant that too much of my time was spent rectifying errors and generally trying to create something I was happy with out of what I saw to be a complete and utter mess/failure. These issues unfortunately had a knock on effect meaning that I didn't get the chance to attempt my final "looking fly" image. As part of my personal growth, I need to become happy with the mistakes I make and learn to use my time productively.

I also feel that my second "Fly" text as image piece could have been a lot clearer. I wanted the piece to be intricate and complex but not illegible which I feel might be an issue in the peer review session coming up. Its a shame because I really like the mechanical concept and this was also so time consuming therefore it would have been great for it to actually work.