Outcome - stage I

I started my outcome piece with a massive piece of hardboard measuring 85cm by 135cm, which with help from my dad, I covered completely in white emulsion. Following this I drew out the four main images of the mermaid, fairy, gnome and lion in pencil and drew out lines of where I planned the four sections of colour would go. I went over the pencil outlines in black marker pen so that my drawings could be painted over but would still show through.

Initial 4 drawings in black marker pen

I started with the water section, which I painted the background of using acrylic paint in blue tones with spray paint drips for an extra water effect and then drew on the mermaid using a combination of blue sharpie pens and fineliners. Apparently textured acrylic paint seems to be one of the few surfaces sharpies don't want to draw onto though!

Mermaid drawing and background

After I'd done the background of the mermaid I did the background of the gnome,  which was also done using acrylic paints - brown, green and white - and drew the gnome on using twig and ink based on the drawing I'd done previously. I omitted the pipe because I thought it would be more appropriate at the location of a family friendly music festival.

Gnome drawing and background (and you can can also see my messy working area)

Following the gnome I painted the background for the fairy using mainly white acrylic paint, mixed in with some pale blue and grey-ish shades too and then drew on the fairy with pencil.

Fairy drawing and background

Before drawing the lion I had some experimenting that needed to be done. I had originally planned to draw the lion in sharpie pens so needed to experiment on a separate page whether this was something that would actually be achievable and my outcome of drawing the lion with sharpie pens wasn't great. Once I'd decided I would use conte crayons for this lion drawing too I experimented with different potential background colours on a separate page. The conte crayons didn't really show up against any of these background colours so I just chose to keep the background white and then possibly paint round my drawing of the lion at a later stage.

Lion drawing

I hadn't done an exact plan of the locations of the background images and motifs to this was something I did next by drawing them onto my mural design with pencil and painting some areas out in white acrylic paint.

Planning the locations of background images and motifs

This post seems to be getting rather long and picture heavy now, and I've come to the end of the first stage of how I designed my mural so it seems like a good time to move onto another post.

The Little Mermaid

Continuing with my development of the water section and influences from my mythical research, I thought an appropriate thing to draw would be a mermaid as that's the first mythical creature that comes to mind when I think of water. I firstly prepared the background of the page with bleach and ink.

Background in bleach and ink

Then using an image I'd found in my research as inspiration I drew out the mermaid outline in pencil, before adding in all the details in blue fineliner. The fineliner was just a really cheap one from Asda, so I think it's quite good how well the drawing has turned out and shows you don't always need expensive equipment.

Outcome of the mermaid drawing

One thing I'm quite proud of in this drawing is the detail in the detail, especially since it took forever to sit there crosshatching it all! Something I'm less pleased with though is the outcome of the face as I've drawn on too many lines, making the mermaid look old/weathered.

Under the Sea

Moving back onto the water section now... and back to the use of the unusual materials of bleach, ink and wax.  I started by drawing out jellyfish shapes onto the page and rubbing over them with a white wax candle to use it as a resist against the ink, followed by covering the whole page with blue Quink ink. Below is a photo of how it looked at this stage. It was difficult to see where on the page I'd put the wax as it's the same colour as the paper so I missed some areas, meaning some of the jellyfish had blue areas when they should have been white all over.

I painted out the blue areas within the jellyfish with bleach and then also used the bleach to add in more tentacles for the jellyfish and to add some detail to the background. As the bleach soaks into the page it creates an almost luminescent effect, which I feel is relevant for the jellyfish.

Before the bleach soaked in

Final outcome

I'm pleased with this piece of work and like its abstract nature as it's different in style from a lot of my other pieces of artwork.

Wave collage

I went back to do more research work on the element of water and wanted to continue using the materials of ink and bleach on a variety of papers to create a wave inspired collage. I covered textured wallpaper with ink and planned to bleach it too but liked the effect without ink so left it as it was. I experimented using different dilutions of ink in order to achieve different tones of blue.

Wallpaper effect

Wallpaper effect using diluted ink

I covered a page half in concentrated ink and half in diluted ink and then experimented with different dilutions of bleach to see what patterns I could achieve. 

Diluted ink and bleach

Concentrated ink and bleach

Using all these papers cut to different sizes and shapes, I then created a collage of a wave inspired by a research image from my original visual research.

Wave collage - final result

Bleach and Ink

One of the more unusual techniques I've been using in my art has been bleach and ink, which is where you paint the page with ink (I used a bottle of quink) and then bleach out areas with household bleach. I had used this technique before in the earlier stages of this art course and had enjoyed it and wanted to explore it further. It also felt relevant to the work I was doing and seemed to have a connection to the element of water.

I was inspired by artists who had done drip paintings such as Jackson Pollock and combined this style of painting - as I felt it linked to water - with the technique of using bleach and ink. Below are two paintings I did in this style, which I did on my table top easel to make them easier to do.

Bleach painting 1

Bleach painting 2

The work I did for this section, which is the water section of the research, was not actually done in this order as I messed up my timetable slightly so the next bit was done at a later date.

I did further research into artists who used bleach and ink in their work and whilst I wasn't successful in finding any professional artists, I did find some amateur artists whose work inspired me. In particular I liked the idea of using wax as a resist before painting the ink across the page, so this was something I tried next. The image I chose to use this technique on was inspired by Hokusai's wave printing.

Hokusai's Wave Printing

My bleach, ink and wax interpretation