Studio Practice - mark making and cyanotype prep

Sketch book experiments- expanding on the set of gel plate prints I made in response to the Hermitage. I used oil pastel, acrylic paint - very repetitive actions trying to crave into the surface and scratch it away  - creating a overlapping distressed look.


                                   

                   

      

      

      

                                              

I Gel plate printed cut up photocopied images taken from Ilkeston social history books- looking for images with a high contrast - and then once transferred onto the gel plate I printed them onto sheets of calico. This was more an exercise to generate ideas and marks - so when I went over the prints in acrylic, ink oil pastel I was very loose and expressive - 

I also printed with lace with lace - referencing Ilkeston's ties to the frame knitting and lace making history- included a statute of the goddess Athena as she is the goddess of crafts and skilled peacetime pursuits- I wanted the paintings to wanted to create a sense of the loneliness in being forgotten.         

                                                                                         

Using all of the material, images, information, text that I had collected throughout this project so far - I made 8 A4 paper collages - each relating to a certain theme or referencing a specific part of Ilkeston's history. They were then printed onto acetate sheets - with the intention that I would then use them to create a cyanotype.  

                    

                    


Here I projected the acetate collages onto the wall of my studio- just to get a sense of if they worked as individual pieces. The plan for my final piece was to create a large cyanotype print using the acetate designs - but after testing the process the levels of light were too unreliable to make a print - to a presentable standard. 

                               

                              

I had to tape the acetate to the material which unfortunately meant that the print did not lie flat- which would have added to the blurriness of the overall image - making it hard to pick out and differentiate between images. - which is important as the collages are very graphic and read more as informational banners - there is a lot of small details and writing within the original which it is important to keep- 

                                  

                                   

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