Part 5: Personal Project Prep

As part of my Personal Project for Part 5, I have set out to devise a path or process to produce a print/ mixed media drawing of my face/head. For the benefit of testing out an idea for this, I have produced the following design. Its not the prettiest image. But for the sake of having something to work on to test out the process it will suffice.

Using a craft knife I cut out the white areas leaving those which I wanted to ink up. Cardboard is surprisingly good for this as it has a removable surface layer that peels away rather satisfyingly. I then painted acrylic gesso onto the surface of my cardboard printing plate and left this to dry. Two more coats later and I had a printable plate.

I produced a few prints from this including the following one:

I then looked at a favourite artist I’d discovered on Artfinder.com. Pavel Kuragin produces intriguing surreal images which get my creative muscles flexing.

This led me to look again at the prints I’d produced. I’d designed the image after looking at a book including the art of ancient cultures. This Mayan-inspired image needed something in order to hit that “sweet spot” you reach with a work in progress where you know it is finished.

I looked closely at Pavel Kuragin’s style and worked out what his process might be. I then went on to take a yellow highlighter pen and colour in some of the white areas of the face. Not satisfied, I then found a sharpie pen and drew around the outlines of the print in black, like so:

For the purposes of this exercise this image works rather well as it is a challenge to make it appealing!

The following print yellow water based ink instead of green/blue is improved somewhat, I feel, by the addition of purple and turquoise highlighter and sharpie pens.

The process has scope for a lot of play and experimentation – which I am pleased about. The rough surface of the ink on the paper acts as a guide for the tip of the pen making it easy to outline inked areas. This paler print – being less dominant – holds more opportunity for addition of other colours.

I shall try to produce an interesting self portrait using this process but will try to avoid such a flat “graphic art” result. But again, for the purposes of this exercise it works rather well.

I think I may base my finished design for Assignment 5 on the following image:

References:

Kuragin. P. https://www.artfinder.com/pavel-kuragin#/ (date of access 06/06/20)

Walker. M. (2020) Self portrait from sketchbook [pastel on paper]