Bubblewrap Printing

Continuing on with the bubblewrap theme, you'd think I was obsessed or something?! But actually it is just an unusual and very versatile material to use! For my next bit of work I used bubblewrap to print with, as I'd done previously, but this time used images from my mythical research. I chose a Pegasus image and a butterfly image. I cut these shapes out of the bubblewrap and took some photos of them focusing on the shadows and silhouettes they created.

I then used the shapes I'd cut out for printing and as stencils and below are some of my favourite outcomes.

At some point in the future I may also do these prints using card instead of bubblewrap in order to achieve sharper outlines. I may also draw some designs and patterns within the bold outlines.

Which is your favourite?

Building a Bubblewrap Bird

This is a piece of work that I'm particularly proud of as I feel like it's very unique and was unsure whether I'd actually succeed in doing it. I wanted to continue with the use of bubblewrap because of its relation to the element of air and thought seeing as I had a massive roll of it I may as well try making a model. I used one of the images I'd found in my research to base the model on to try and make it look more realistic and I was most impressed when my dad actually managed to guess what breed of bird it is!!

Unfortunately, because it's 3D it's quite hard to accurately convey it through photographs, but I've done my best.

See if you can guess what type of bird it is in the comments below?

Bubblewrap Bird Printing

I was inspired by the use of bubblewrap and the bird silhouettes so I continued to investigate these ideas further. Firstly I used my painting to do printing with, by painting block printing ink over the silhouettes of the birds and printing with it; at this stage it was difficult to see which areas I had put ink and difficult printing with bubblewrap as it was a new technique. My favourite outcome of this was the one that I printed onto paper I had previously prepared with a wash of blue and white acrylic paint to give a sky effect - the image of this is below.

Bird Prints

Next I took a new piece of bubblewrap onto which I outlined two larger bird silhouettes again using sharpie marker pen and I used these to print with using block printing ink in the colours of black, white and purple. I experimented with mixing two colours onto the bubble wrap and with doing 2 prints on a page to produce a shadow effect - the image of this is below.

Bird Prints with Shadows

Bubblewrap Birds

For this project I am trying to be more organised than I have been throughout the rest of my art course so I made a timetable illustrating what I plan to do each week. For the first 4 weeks I'm spending a week doing research on each of the elements; the first one being air. In my timetable I also roughly planned what I would be doing each week to keep the work flowing and have a logical record of my thoughts and processes.

Seeing as the first element was air, I wanted to try and choose media and materials that relate to that element as well as using images from my original research to inspire my work. I chose to continue using the bird silhouettes that I drew in my original collage only this time to paint them onto bubble wrap because of its connection to air (the bubbles all contain air). I drew and shaded in the silhouettes using black sharpie marker pen as this was one of the few media that worked well on the plastic and then painted the sky background using acrylic paints, but to add more atmosphere to the painting I also added in colours of yellow, pink and green.

Bubblewrap Birds

 I chose to display this piece of work in a frame that I had at home already as I thought it would be a good way to finish it off and I think that the gold of the frame is a complimentary colour. I like to think this piece of art could be used as interactive art as the bubbles in the bubble wrap can be popped by viewers thus releasing the air from them. Furthermore, I think it would be fascinating for it to be done on a massive scale, such as in a gallery or warehouse to that visitors would have the opportunity to pop the bubbles.