Module 4 Chapter 4

Scraffito

Before I started on this chapter I had a look at the artists you recommended.  My favourite was Heeseop Yoon and I have chosen this picture to keep in my sketchbook.

This is produced using black tape wound round the pillars and stuck to the walls.  I think the pillars are her own and I assume the tape is actually stuck to a background and then attached to the walls, otherwise, it could get messy.

I have also been back to my original drawing of the goldfinch and have photocopied the one I put tone into and have now added some texture.  At least I think that is what it looks like.

I don't know if you can see it very well but it does look sharper than the original.  I used a drawing pen number 2 to add feathers and make the seed head spikier.

4.4.1.

I am not a lover of scraffito, I never feel it works very well for me.  However, I am quite pleased with some of these pieces.

This was my first try using oil pastels and gouache over the top.  The gouache scraped off fairly well and the colours came through OK.  The instructions say that dark over light colours works best so I had to have a go at the other way round.

I thought this worked really well.  Black and red oil pastel with white gouache over the top.  The white gouache scraped away really well so I was quite pleased with the result.  I washed the paper with Koh-i-Noor before doing anything else.

I was quite keen now so I prepared a page with oil pastel and black gouache to make a copy of one of my drawings from a previous chapter.

I didn't get back to this page for a couple of weeks and the gouache seemed to have dried hard and I found it quite difficult to scrape off.  The flash on the camera has made the blue light up and it looks really nice, in fact the whole page looks better here than in my book.

I then tried various other mediums to see how they worked.

I've used pencil crayon with inktense over, inktense with gouache, markel stick and gouache, oil pastel with oil pastel, oil pastel and acrylic, oil pastel and emulsion paint, inktense and acrylic, inktense and inktense, and water soluble crayon and acrylic.

'Greasier' mediums work best as the base colour, gouache and acrylic work best over the top.  Two oilier colours on top of each other tend to just blend together rather than scrape away.  I used a toothpick for all the scraping.

Finally I went back to my goldfinch and using inktense and acrylic I coloured in the outline drawing I had done earlier (photocopied).  I used inktense and acrylic paint and where the bird has black patches I used a dark green.

His colouring is a bit unusual for a goldfinch but I do quite like him.  I added the leg afterwards with a felt tip pen and did a light wash of green watercolour over the whole page.

As I said, this isn't my favourite medium but I am quite pleased with what I have achieved.  However, I don't know if I will ever use it but you never know, one day this effect might be just what I am looking for.