Exercise 3, Experiment with mixed media
Initially, as a quick sketch I used some oil pastels, watercolour and biro to sketch the vase and flowers. I felt this was too simplistic and I was keen to explore this further by revisiting the beer bottle and lemons as a subject.
Although this was with items I had used before, I set up a different composition, and used an A3 coloured background so that I could further explore how a variety of mediums might work on this type of card paper.
Some of the materials I used for this mixed media drawing were:
- Watercolour inks
- Micron pens
- Prismacolor pencils
- Stabilo Carbothello pencils
- Derwent Inktense pencils
- Caran D’Ache Neocolor II watercolour wax pastels
- Tombow watercolour pens
- Unipin Black Fineliner permanent pen
- White Posca acrylic pen
- Childrens quality watercolour block paint set
I approached this with a loose style, dropping in the background with the bold, bright watercolour inks. Having drawn these objects already, I felt quite familiar with them and I think this helped the looseness of this artwork.
In completing this drawing I had to carefully think about what order I might apply the different media, conscious that it would not be possible to use most media on top of wax pastels. It was interesting to see how the white acrylic sat on this coloured paper, however, in using this for highlights in the lemons I found it overpowered other aspects of the drawing. I left the artwork at this point.
Fortunately, returning to this picture a week or so later, I began to continue the experiments with different media and was pleased when the Neocolor II wax pastels allowed me to ‘pull back’ on the dominance of the acrylic pen.
Value of the exercise?
- To explore different media further
- To experiment with the order of applying mixed media
- To work in a looser, more fluid way with items I was already familiar with drawing.
What did I learn?
- The benefit of returning to a piece of artwork after a period of time, seeing it with new eyes and new posiibilities and continuing to rework it.
- The advantage of revisiting objects you have drawn before, albeit in a different composition, as your knowledge of and relationship with the familiar objects allow for more spontaneity in creating the artwork. I was also able to work on areas that had been challenging in the previous drawing.
- Over this and the previous exercises I felt the need to make made colour charts of all the media I was using which did and will continue to prove to be really helpful.
Charts:
- MATERIALS USED:
- oil pastels
- Neopastels II
- Prismacolor colour pencils
- Staedtler Watercolour pencils
- Faber Castell Polychromos
- Derwent Inktense watercolour pencils
- Nexus ink watercolours
- Stabilo Carbothello chalk pencils and Rembrandt/Sennelier chalk pastels
Wonderings for the future
- Continue exploring different support materials for artwork
Cathy's OCA Drawing 1 Blog 