Paper making

 On Friday I spent the afternoon making paper with Amy Pieterse from Fine Art and I really enjoyed it. We used denim jeans to make the pulp, which is why the paper came out blue which is stunning but not practical to paint on. This was a test as I want to make white cotton paper to use for my watercolour painting.

Here is a link to a compilation video of Amy teaching me the papermaking process: https://youtu.be/kNn7og5fnE8

Bowes,K.,(2021). Paper making 

Colour wheel

I brushed up on my colour theory by painting a colour wheel using watercolour paint. 

I learned how to use the Alfred Hickethier system to label the colours, each colour is assigned a number, "whit 000(absence of colour), black 999(the presence of all colour), yellow(process yellow) 900, red 090 [...], and blue 009,"( Anderson 2006.:20). Using this system made it easier to mix colours as I looked at colour in parts/ratios, for example 903 (yellow green) can be simplified as 3 parts yellow and 1 part blue.

Bowes, K., (2021). Colour Wheel.

Transparent enamel

 After seeing my glazed ceramics I was inspired to work a bit more with my punches to create the feeling of different plants similarly to James' work with her roll milling.  I used these punched pieces to text the transparent enamel for the roll milled leaf texture. Transparent enamel takes longer to fire but there is a fine line between it going transparent and over firing. I was very excited to see that the enamel worked as I have only ever used transparent enamel on etched metal.

Bowes, K., (2020). Punched plant images.

Enamel colours: Top left to right- cactus green, cloisonne blue and unknown blue-green

Bottom left to right- 19A green and Atlantic blue

Bowes, K., (2020). Transparent enamel landscapes

Transparent enamel leaf skeleton

Inspired by James’ work I decided to try roll milling my skeleton leaf onto some copper. The detail transferred but not as well as I thought it would. I cut the test into pieces then tested transparent enamel. I expected the enamel to become transparent but most detail would be lost. The cloisonné blue did exactly as expected but the cactus green colour surprisingly managed to capture all the fine details. I think that is a result of the green being darker.

I feel this method captures the texture of the leaf better than the opaque enamel leaf stencil. The transparent enamel makes it look as if it is a leaf trapped in a glass layer. Whereas the opaque enamel looks more like an illustration of the leaf.

Bowes, K., (2020) Skeleton leaf roll milled.

Bowes, K., (2020). Transparent cloisonne blue enamel

Bowes, K., (2020). Cactus green transparent enamel

Enamel experiment

I decided to try using my abstract pattern page to create some enamelled domes. I first made a mistake of piercing out the pattern and then doming it which just distorted the shape and broke a section off, so I started again making sure to dome first. 

I love the contrast on the leaves of the Garden Croton plant I have growing at home so I decided to use that for my colour pallet for the enamel. The plant is not indigenous so I don't see them very often. The lady who owned the house before us put a lot of effort into her garden before we made many changes this was one of the few plants we left where she planted so there is colour in the garden.

I chose to use a deep green and red to imitate the contrast on the dark leaves and the colours are complementary. The green enamel appeared bluer on the lid test piece but when I fired it it came out green which is what I wanted.

My Garden Croton

Green and red enamel

I'm not sure if the green is a hard enamel but I do know that the red is a soft enamel. I tried layering the enamels both ways green on red and red on green (test pieces are at my bench I will insert a picture). The green sat on top of the red making it thick and look terrible but the red blended on top of the green making it smooth and speckled in some areas as if the two colours were applied at the same time. The leaves also have a speckled effect so I prefer the red on the green enamel.

The final domes after enamelling

Abstract pattern

This was another doodle page I did during the lockdown and between the three I enjoyed drawing this one the most and this page was purely for enjoyment. I feel there is more variety of shapes and size compared to the triangle and bubble doodle pages. It reminds me of the nervous system program once the grid has been manipulated but it's not all circles and looking at the positive and negative shapes it also sort of resembles the venation patterns found in insect wings but with thicker lines between the segments. 

I wasn't sure what I was going to do with the pattern so I photocopied it and sectioned off small parts of which I then coloured with pencil crayons thus making the positive and negative spacing clearer. I used different colours as I was planning on choosing a colour to colour the entire A3 page, just for fun, but ended up forgetting about it entirely until I saw the page with the coloured circles last week and realized they looked almost like abstract enamel discs which could be interesting.

Coloured segments

A3 doodle page

Textiles and Jewellery

 In the 1960s Arline Finsch and Mary Lee Hu explored crochet, weaving and knitting with metal wire; techniques originally used to manufacture textiles therefore, the metal had characteristics that are fabric-like. The woven metal was flexible and lightweight. Colour was also important so the metals were oxidized or different metals were combined.
Textiles can also be brought into jewellery. An example of this is Phillippa Green's embroidered perspex cuffs. I feel like this piece could be added to the Dress Jewellery paper as metal can be used to create textiles but textiles can be used in jewellery as well. As much as we use techniques from the textile industry we also use materials like thread and cord. These materials are often used to add colour in jewellery, without having to set stones, because only using metal means colours are limited to about three colours in different shades yellow (brass and gold), grey (aluminium, silver, gold etc.) and pinkish-red (copper and gold).

Philippa Green, perspex and embroidery thread
https://www.philippagreen.com/flower

Arline Fisch, Bracelet and Glove
coated copper and fine silver

Triangle embroidery progress

I tried to do a pattern with circles but I ended up trying to make all the circles perfectly round and I found it difficult to work with. The triangles fit together like a puzzle and I can use different types of triangles(equilateral, isosceles and scalene). The pattern was natural to draw because I used to do triangle doodles like this in school but instead of drawing on paper, I used to draw on my skin like my left hand or my knees. I chose the complementary colours so that the orange would stand out against the blue fabric.

Bowes, K., (2020). Abstract embroidery.

Doodles

I spent a whole day during the lockdown doing mindless doodles to pass the time. Once I was done, I filled the page, I thought it would be interesting to embroid all of the negative spaces between the triangles. I drew the pattern again onto some of the scrap fabric I have been using for embroidery. I use a fine liner that will wash out of the fabric when I am done so there will be no black lines left once it is done. I chose adjacent orange colours (yellow-orange, orange, red-orange) or as close to them as I could get with the thread I have on hand. I chose these colours as orange is the complementary colour to blue and the fabric is a light denim blue. Working with three colours is better than working with one as it can be boring and three colours will make the thread go further. I didn't draw the whole pattern because I don't fill the embroidery ring to the edges I want to draw as I embroid; I love the irregular shape the whole pattern makes naturally. The thread makes the triangles lose their ridged geometric look, even if the threads line up perfectly the sides of the triangles aren't smooth because I am stitching horizontally.

Figure 1- Bowes, K., (2020). Drawing of the triangle pattern.

Figure 2- Bowes, K., (2020). Triangle pattern embroidered.

Venation embroidered

I photocopied and enlarged one of my leaf skeletons on a photocopy machine so I could see the veins clearly. I decided to embroider the pattern as this is what I was going to add an enamel piece to, but I can't exactly enamel being stuck at home. I used the same photocopier to draw and pierce out the copper I was going to enamel. I used scrap material to practice my embroidery. I wanted to use green thread as I thought the finished embroidery might look abstract once it was done as the image was only part of the leaf and not the whole leaf. The only green thread I had was one that changes colour. This added to the randomness of the design as the changes in colour were unpredictable as the lengths of colours weren't exactly the same and cutting smaller pieces of thread to work with also made the colour changes unpredictable. The green is monochromatic as the thread was ombre that went from dark to normal green to light green and then repeated.

Photo collage

I was inspired by Nora Kovat to use an actual reference to inspire my enamelling colour choices. I want to choose colour schemes that exist in nature. I am going to do some watercolour drawings but for the meantime, I created some digital photo collages. I used photos I have taken of my garden and other places; I want to print my collages and place them at my bench to influence my work. My original plan was to do some collages from magazines and some drawings. Due to the lockdown, I couldn't collect any from friends and family as I don't have any magazines at home.

I downloaded the photos and uploaded them into an app called Artflow. Each image had its own layer and I moved layer by layer erasing the backgrounds of each picture. This was time-consuming and somewhat frustrating to try not accidentally erase the edges of the image. I then played with placement and layering the images to see which image needed to overlap other images. Once the individual images were layered exactly to my liking I merged them into one image. When I was about to save the first collage I accidentally made the collage a negative which changed all the colours their opposite colour also making it neon. The changes made the collage interesting especially the second collage it made the plants look like deep-sea neon coral. I saved both collages as normal images and as negatives.

First collage

First collage negative

Second collage

Second collage negative

Colour theory - colour combinations

 The colour wheel can be split in many different ways to create colour combinations that are harmonious and pleasing to the eye.
The colour wheel can be split in half with half the colours being warm colours and the other half is cool colours. Warm colours include red, orange and yellow and cool colours are blue and green (including all their tones, shades tints and tertiary colours). Purple can be a grey area as it is a combination of red and blue which is both warm and cool. Purple's tertiary colours, on the other hand, are definitely divided blue-purple is cool and red-purple is warm. According to the site where I took my images from purple is in cool colours.

cool and warm colours
https://99designs.com/blog/tips/the-7-step-guide-to-understanding-color-theory/

The colour wheel can also be split into 3 colour schemes:
Complementary colours- these colours are directly opposite one another on the colour wheel these colours contrast one another and pop when used together, for example blue and orange.
Split complementary- it is the same as complimentary but it is a hue and instead of the hue on the opposite side of the colour wheel it's the two colours on either side of the complementary colour for example complementary colours would be blue and orange but split complementary would be blue, red-orange and yellow-orange.

Analogous colours- are three colours that are right next to each other on the colour wheel, for example blue, blue-green and green.

Triadic colours- these are three colours that are evenly spaced out on the colour wheel and are bright together, for example blue, red and yellow.
Monochromatic- this consists of a hue, a shade of the hue and a tint of the same hue.

colour schemes
https://99designs.com/blog/tips/the-7-step-guide-to-understanding-color-theory/

Colour theory - colour wheel

Colour theory is important when enamelling as combining colours need to be carefully considered.
There are three main colours which make up all the colours we see these three colours are called primary colours: red, blue and yellow. When these colours are mixed in different combinations they make three new colours called secondary colours: red + blue = purple, red + yellow = orange, blue + yellow = green. Mixing primary and secondary colours create six new colour combinations which are tertiary colours.
All these colours are usually depicted in a circle called a colour wheel. it is composed of the primary colours with the secondary colours between the colours primary colours that make them. The tertiary colours are between the primary and secondary colours which make them. For example purple will be between red and blue on either side of the purple will be tertiary colours so between blue and purple will be blue-purple.

primary, secondary and tertiary colours
https://99designs.com/blog/tips/the-7-step-guide-to-understanding-color-theory/

Light is what determines the colours we see, light splits into seven colours Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet. Light hits an object and is reflected off the object and that is how we see different colours and due to this black and white aren't colours. Black is the absence of light and white is all the colours combined which are just the reflection of light. But when mixing colours adding black creates shades of the base colour, also called a hue, adding white to the hue creates tints and adding grey creates tones this is how we have many variations of all the basic hues.

hue, shade, tint and tone
https://99designs.com/blog/tips/the-7-step-guide-to-understanding-color-theory/

Beads

Figure 1- glass seed beads

I forgot to post about this but on the 26th of February, we had a visitor from overseas that is doing research on different kinds of beads. The advanced diploma students including myself took a walk to our local bead shop near the Victoria Street market.

Buying beads was very frustrating as the mean behind the counter at the shop was colour blind. I pointed out a bundle of ocean green beads on display that I was interested in buying. It took the man 5min to find the exact colour, I had pointed out, among the beads in stock as the beads on display are usually not for sale. The man would show us beads of the same shininess but of the wrong colour which was very frustrating.

There were green beads in stock but only in a size two which means you have to buy the bundle which is about six strands on beads instead of buying individual strands which they do for the size 1 beads. Instead, I chose three different strands of size one beads, as seen in figure 1, that I felt were a mix of all the colour reflected in the originally ocean green beads I was interested in. The three colours, turquoise, teal and peacock green, that I bought are all shiny also like the original ocean green beads.