Freitag, 12. Juni 2015

MARF Productions - Monthly Challenge (June)

This month's topic is: Illustrations based on rorschach tests

The topic is inspired by the wonderful L Filipe dos Santos.
Doodlers anonymous featured a wonderful article about some of his sketchbook works, check it out here.

I am really excited about this one and was waiting for it to come up! It reminds me of my atelier-classes from the first semesters of my study. The assignments were always very experimental and getting you out of your comfort zone, which was great! And it is something I do way to little at the moment, so yay to this months topic!! :D

Lets talk about the technique: You can bascially just mess around with watercolours (or gouache, acrylics, ink...whatever you feel comfortable with and which is suited for making an inkblot test) and then make an imprint of the wet colours. It is very playful and creates random patterns, which is a nice change for someone, who tends to plan and structure her workprocess too much (like i do... -.- ).
When the colours are dry you can work over it with wathever you like. L Filipe dos Santos used coloured pencils, black liners and sometimes watercolour again. So, do whatever feels right and worth trying out to you! And have fun! :D <3



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Step 1.

In the beginning I gathered all the stuff I would need, including some old used sketch paper, the cheap acrylics I once bought (since I wanted to use a lot of paint, it didn't make sense to use the good ones. The problem with the cheap arylics is that they are kind of transparent if applied thinly. But since I intended to go wild with many layers of paint, that was no problem at all), some rubbergloves, a scraper, something to scratch lines into the paint (only if you intend to create this kind of textures) and a papertowel.
Then I laid a thin colour coat onto the paper. If you use a white paper and do not do that, the paper that will be pressed against the painted paper will have white stains between the imprints.




I used different paints to create different effects. I achieved the best results with a mixture of cheap glitter acrylics and coloured ink –the glitter acrylics are kind of sticky and dry really fast, but they are not that colourful. The ink on the other hand has vibrant colours but is very fluid and does not stick to the paper after folding and pressing it together. So a mixture of both is just the right amount of colour and stickyness.
With this materials you do not necessarily need to put a coloured layer beneath, because they are more fluid than the pure acrylics and when pressed together fill the holes or create nice transitions.
I also used thick white ink to drop into the free spaces, so the colours would mix and create a pastell-ish colourmix.




Step 2.

At this point I selected one inkblot I liked best and which inspired me the most. I scanned it and started to work in Photoshop on it, using a lot of textured brushes and the stamp-tool. I recorded the process and made a short video of the footage:



And here you have the final result:



As closing remarks I would like to encourage you on just going with the stuff you have at home and trying them out. They are probably not going to react the same way as the paints I used did, but that can be a good thing. Getting to know the perks of the materials is part of the fun. So, although I wrote a review about my workprocess for you guys to recreate, feel free to do things differently. And, of course, have fun! :)