Assignment 5 Drawing Outdoors – Media Experimentation and Selection

17 & 18/11/14

Assignment 5 Drawing Outdoors – Media Experimentation and Selection

In my mind I wanted to use water based media to produce washes particularly with wet in wet effects. The following experiments were mainly focussed on the woodland in the middle ground of my composition and which colours to use for what.  I was also keen to try out salt effects both with sea salt and table salt to disperse the ink and watercolour to produce texture. I’ve taken some work in progress photos to show how the layers were built up.

Getting ready using sketches and studies

190 gsm hot pressed w/c paper stretched and sectioned into 4 to experiment with water based media

Water colour only, first washes

Water colour only – placement and mid ground tree effects

Water colour and acrylic ink 1

Watercolour and acrylic ink 2

Acrylic ink only with salt effect

Water colour and acrylic ink

Water colour, acrylic ink and salt effects

Colour media experiments with notes

Sketchbook page showing the colours I intended to use following the colour studies. Also, the adding texture with screwed up tissue and hand-made paper,
A mixture of watercolour, acrylic ink and oil pastels.

 

From the above studies and playing around with colours and media, I made a rough plan in my sketch book of the colours of ink and watercolour I wanted to use.  I had seen some mixed media work using tissue paper as a textured base so thought I’d try this, plus I had some hand-made paper that was very absorbent and frayed freely at a torn edge. Texture is a key part of this drawing so I also wanted to try using salt  sprinkled onto wet media and see how it reacted, I used large grain sea salt and fine grain table salt.  I imagined that the larger grain would be useful to describe the moss on the

Further experimentation with textures using:
Oil pastel as a resist
Salt to diffuse pigment
Hand-made paper to use wet in wet pigment.

concrete and the finer grain would give a diffused effect to show rough texture.  I could, of course,

have used rough watercolour paper to show this, However, I made a conscious decision to use smooth hot pressed paper as I can add roughness but not take it away and be more selective in where this was done.