Final Project - new directions

Inspired by my last tutorial with met, I spent much of today playing around with shreds of paper, trying out some of the ideas which emerged on monday.

I tried various ways of stitching paper strips onto long threads - using both white cotton thread, and invisible nylon, and trying this out on some printed paper strips, and some strips torn from my hand-made paper.  Neither is easy to do.

Nylon thread is incredibly difficult to handle, and hard on the eye-sight too.   Here I have used nylon thread on hand-made paper.

This is cotton thread on hand-made paper but I was left with a double threads from the machine stitching.

The white cotton shows up more, but is considerably easier to work with.

This is cotton thread on a printed paper strip, but I cut the bobbin thread between each strip, so that there is only one thread visible.  This works better and if I continue with threading, I will use this method - it looks site good and is easier to handle than the invisible nylon.

 I don't have anywhere at home to hang long threads from, so I only made about half a dozen pieces at this stage.  I liked the way the shreds of paper twirled around once they are hanging, and a fair number of these, grouped together, would make  quite a strong visual impact.  but it might drive me insane making them.

I also tried throwing shredded paper onto a large sheet of black paper, and then drawing lines where the paper fell.

 I used various media - different pale-coloured pencils and then a gold pen.  I rather liked the mysterious quality of the lines themselves, and also the way, on black paper, the patterns of lines doesn't stand out, but is interesting when you get close.

I then covered a sheet of black paper with a thin layer of pva glue, and dropped the cut strips of text on to that - so I have a sort of collage of the trips...which worked quite well although the glue shows up rather too much.

.. and here in close-up.  I like the loose texture, the strips are not glued completely or firmly to the backing, but tumble over each other, preserving the sense of free-fall they had when they were scattered.

I tried a similar approach, this time dropping the small strips of printed paper on to a white paper base, and then drew the resulting marks with a black marker pen.  i liked the strength of the lines I got from this.

Next I abandoned using the actual paper strips, but instead I used slightly diluted black acrylic paint, and a strip of card dipped into the paint and used as a small printing device, to create a pattern of higgledy-piggledy overlapping short lines, but with a concentrations in the middle, to represent the heap of paper shreds.  I like the overall effect of this approach, and because the acrylic paint was quite thickly applied, there is a 3D texture to the finished image.

This is the image half completed,  with a relatively thin scattering of lines...

...and the same in close-up...

and even closer...

This is the finished version, with much denser drawing of lines...

In close-up you can see the rich texture of the paint...

and even richer here...

And then I repeated this approach using Indian ink and smaller strips of cardboard.  This also worked well.

I am pleased with these results - partly because I just liked the results, but mainly because this has taken me into a new dimension with the project itself.  It is still rooted in the torn or shredded strips of my 'old life' papers, but translates these into a different context - of drawing, and printing, and creating an image which is embedded in the concept but is separate from it and which has a visual identity, and an abstraction,  all of its own.

I did all three 'drop' drawings on a single long sheet of paper (wallpaper lining paper, strong, cheap and infinitely accessible) draped along my big kitchen table.  I rather liked the way the three related but different images work together.  This image doesn't do them justice, because they were still lying horizontally.  But hung vertically, I think they would look very good.  I might want to use this as a back-drop for my final show piece....

The marks I have been making today seem to me to be related to the mark-making I did in my second Pathway Project too - although that was 'non-writing' there was a similarly abstract quality about them, a rhythm which I seem to have got again today, and also the use of monochrome black and white, which I think emphasises the strength and interest of the liens themselves.

I think this is worth pursuing further, and tomorrow I will explore how else I could capture this idea in stitch and in other types of simple print.