Collage and ink resist continued ...

Following on from my last post, the Indian ink was washed off under running water and stretched onto a board.  The first surprise was that the gouache had not protected the white gesso stamped pattern on the left, in fact the ink had soaked into the gesso making that area rather dark.

"The reveal" after a visit to the sink

Next, I tried out various painted papers to see which would be suitable for the collage elements.  I took quite a few photos during the whole process so it was possible to compare the different layouts on my computer screen.  In addition, I started to repaint the work as much of the original watercolour gets lost during the washing process.

One of the trial runs with collage

The collage on the fruit bowl and the border behind it has been decided and most of the repainting completed (below).  In an attempt to tone down the patterned left hand side I overpainted with white gouache, but this did nothing to improve matters.

Trying to tone down the lefthand side

After letting things sit overnight I felt I had to wash off the gouache and try something else.  In my paper stash I found a piece of peach coloured printed tissue and this served to act as a veil over the offending pattern. With the addition of another couple of small collage elements, I think that's as far as I will go with this particular piece, but it might be worth exploring this style further.

The collage papers used are shown on the right hand side

The Ridgefield Pot - watercolour, gouache, ink and collage
Approx 8" x 8" on Arches not 140lb 

Collage and ink resist

For quite a while I have had a notion to try and combine the ink resist technique with collage.  I searched my reject pile and pulled out a failed watercolour with which to experiment.

Watercolour with some background printing with gesso - definitely not a very good effort

Overlay of white gouache

I wasn't keen on the printed pattern on the left, so covered that and isolated a few smaller rectangles. It's looking much better now (perhaps I should have left it at this stage!).

Now it is covered in India ink - not much to see here! 

In the next post we'll see what happens when this is washed off under running water.  It could be a complete disaster, but worth a try.

Comments and sketches

I know some readers of this blog have been unable to make comments and I have been trying to rectify this.  I have now come across a possible solution on the web and have changed my settings accordingly - let's hope it works!  If you have tried to comment in the past without success, please try again so I can gauge whether the problem has been sorted.

I have been getting on with my 100 bookmarks project - printing, cutting out and collaging, outlining elements with metallic ink, etc. - and I have completed another 30.  I am two-thirds of the way there.  On occasion, I quite enjoy the repetitive nature of a task such as this.

In the meantime, to provide a bit of colour in this post, a few sketches from the past:

Powis Castle terrace - plein air sketch

Chirk Castle summerhouse - plein air sketch

Rusted metal sculpture, Malmesbury Abbey Gardens - plein air sketch

Norwegian fisherman's hut - plein air sketch

Trondheim warehouses

Watercolour birthday card

At the beginning of the year, I used this postcard size watercolour to decorate a special birthday card. The insert was an origami-type fold (called "farmer's purse") with computer printed message and decorated with handmade foam stamps.

Cricklade artist's book (2)

I have finally put this book together (12 pages in total).  (See previous post.) The image on the front cover was a paper cast made from one of my lino cuts and therefore the book needed to be in portrait format.  However, most of my sketches needed to be in landscape format, so I decided to alternate between landscape orientated images and portrait aligned text.

Cover 4" x 6"

Pages 2 and 3

Pages 4 and 5