Megan Ong
Activities
Human and Nature
Marbling
Monoprints
Gesso
Human silhouette outline
Human and nature was a fun task for me to do simply because we got to use our own creativity to do a drawing of a combination of two elements. We were assigned to draw at least 10 A5 sheets of paper where I just spilled out my imagination.
Marbling was a much harder task for us to do but it managed to give us some pretty good outcomes.
Our lecturer has shared with us two different techniques that we could use to create a beautiful marble art and that is either to use nail polish or gloss paint which was all up to us. We firstly invested in different coloured gloss paint for the whole class to share so we had to stay back to do some marbling. My friends and I decided to firstly try out the nail polish technique. All we needed was thick paper, nail polish of course and a container. From my experience, the nail polish did not work as well compared to the gloss paint because some of our nail polishes were either too old or too heavy that it sunk to the bottom of the container when we tried to drip it in, but the ones that managed to stay afloat did manage to give our blank piece of paper a little bit of a marbling effect. We attempted the nail polish technique a couple times before we moved on to try out the gloss paint which was so rediculously messy but it was worth it. For that technique, we needed the gloss paint of course, thick paper, terpentine and a container. After we were done, we've produced some pretty good marbling, but it was a challenge to clean up because everything got so oily and sticky from the terpentine but overall, this task was really fun to do.
Monoprints was another task given to us as an activity but it was quite a challenge for me because based on the human and nature we had to make a monoprint out of, i had to trace on the one which had a lot of detailing so I had to be really specific when going over the lines. Because of printmaking classes, I was more recognised with the monoprint concept so I did what can. The image on the right was where I incorporated white gesso to the mix of the water soluble ink and came out with a different outcome.
Our lecturer advised us to try out gesso on one of our artworks. When he demonstrated it, he mixed in poster colour with the gesso which ended up making the artwork look as if it was translucent, and I thought it was cool so I wanted to try it out for myself. I then went out to look at gesso primers and ended up purchasing gesso that wasn't exactly clear, it was white gesso but I tried it out anyways. As I was using the gesso, it felt very thick as if i was using a thick kind of paint but i wasn't . I noticed that the white gesso mixed in with light colours gave me an effect. It wasn't opaque , it wasn't translucent. It was in the middle which I found it different and unique. To sum up this gesso primer technique, it was different to me but cool at the same time.
Human silhouette was another activity which I've enjoyed doing. What we needed to do was basically to choose any type of sport with an effect of a silhouette. I chose the classic netball. Our lecturer told us that we could do almost anything with the outline of the silhouette. It could be inside, it could be outside. I tried out different techniques, different mediums to change the look of the silhouette. I used oil pastels, coffee stirrers, pencil colours and sponge brushes and came up with different coloured outcomes.
Expansion of squares
The expansion of squares was something different to me , something that I have never done before but I find it really cool because based on some of the examples I've seen it, It's like I'm looking at an optical illusion. This task was a little bit of a challenge for me because expansion of squares is where we would have to make the sides of the squares completely identical and symmetrical so everytime I used the blade, I had to be extra careful because some of the ones I made was extremely fragile but overall, It was a great experience.