Method: Build up a variety of surfaces using whaterver comes to hand that has two differently coloured layers. Make several drawings by scratching through into the second layer. You can use wax and acrylic paint, oil glazes on board, household paint on wood. varnish on metal. Vary the scale of the drawing depending on your support. Choose a subject from your sketchbook or learning log and push through to make complet drawings, not just squares of texture with random marks. That way you will really learn what the materials can do.

Experimenting first: 

 

Drawings: 

Reflection :

When I think mark-making one of the artists who comes into my mind is Cy Twombly. He might not have used a variety of tools in different ways or scrapping as it is suggesting in this exercise, but he achieved great final images with very expressive marks. I didn’t have many different surfaces to test or unusual materials. I tried with what I had, mostly drawing, painting medium. I always enjoyed using layers of oil pastel and scratch the layers to mix of uncover the first layer colour. This time I tried watercolour, acrylic and different papers. The most interesting surface I found and it was the best result for this project was : acetate sheets. It is not a very environment friendly material but it gave me the painting and scratching result desired. It was something so new to me, very graphic and surprising. I used couple images from my sketch book and coloured paper in the scratched areas to give forms to the shapes I drew by scratching. 

https://www.theartstory.org/artist/twombly-cy/

Research Point :

https://www.angelaeames.com

Angela Eames:  British Artist and practising drawer who explores drawing in relation to technology. Angela’s methodology is innovative, approaching materials and virtual outcomes. She experiments using raw data producing intriguing and unfamiliar images or landscapes. I am not using any sort of technology to investigate drawing at the moment, I would like to but I don’t know how, since I don’t have knowledge in softwares that provides that source of material. I still believe that through this module I am working with similar foundation : experimenting, investigating and exploring ways to produce images using a variety of materials, methods and techniques. 

https://ocula.com/artists/michael-borremans/

Michael Borremans: Belgium contemporary artist whose paintings shows clearly influences and inspiration from artists such : Manet, Diego Velazquez and Francisco Goya. I personally see great similarity with some of Goya’s paintings as in intensity and explicit in the human psyche relating to darkness and death.  Borremans paintings has this depth of sinister and dark. How he presents his subjects in his paintings is enigmatic. His human figures usually  have a frozen state, incomplete bodies with the absence of limbs.

It triggers strong feelings of human beauty in darkness. There is some things in his paintings that reminds me of Jenny Saville artwork. His forms are impeccable and realistic. He uses video, models  and photos to support his creations. In my opinion there is a certain fascination in many of us in death, sinister and frighten images. I relate the work of Borremans and this project in investigating how to trigger through paintings/drawings, human deepest feelings and in finding a variety of supporting material to achieve a desirable result. 

https://www.simonleegallery.com/artists/jim-shaw/

Jim Shaw: American artist and creator of fictional religion called Oism. Shaw’s artwork is a mixture of pop culture, comic books, pulp novels, rock album covers and more. He mixes many materials to create intricate visual imageries. His artwork creates connections between his own psyche and America large political, social and spiritual histories and its conflicting forces. I see the relation of Jim Shaw’s art and this Part 2 as in how endless are the  sources we can use to represent subjects and narratives through our art. In my opinion, Jim Shaw work is a mixture of protesting, confronting and  his own personal feelings against the modern society we live and the culture he lives in.