Monday 7 July 2008

Fluorescent Paints

As a change from slaving over the sewing machine, working on quilts for FoQ, I've been doing some more exercises from the 'Studio- Journals' course, this time on colour. As I largely ignore colour wheels etc and use intuition, I decided not to do excercises associated with colour theory but to have a go at constructing palettes from 1 inch squares cut from magazines. I rifled through 3 old copies of Saturday Guardian magazine cutting out photos and then cutting selected ones into 1 inch strips and then squares. My eye was drawn by the pinks and reds in images of Desmond Tutu, football stadiums and an article on festivals in India illustrated by umbrellas ( along with various advertisements) I showed Ian what I'd done and he instantly saw what I had not, that my palette had been influenced by what we'd seen at the RA Summer exhibition. Besides what I've written about already, we were struck by the subtle use of fluorescent paints in several pieces which drew your eye across the room, particularly those of Frank Bowling and Barbara Rae but they were by no means the only ones.
I prepared this watercolour page with cling film scrunched in the wet paint and allowed to dry. I now need to search for fabrics and threads to match this palette and stick 'em down.

I'd first had a go with watercolours and cling film in my sketchbook (unfortunately buckling the page) as background for photos and drawings of Sheila's bean poles. Ian and I spent the weekend with his parents a few weeks ago, a pleasant time discussing gardening and picking gooseberries. Both Ian and I were brought up with our parents watching Gardeners World , and thought it rather boring. Now we're avid watchers ourselves and ring Ian's parents afterwards to discuss ideas. Scary how you turn into your parents or perhaps it's just the onset of middle age!

1 comment:

neki desu said...

love the sketch at the bottom,so full of possibilities.
you've inspired me with the watercolor-saran wrap technique. i'll give it a twist though and use some other kind of paint

neki desu