Continuing with the development of designing clothing in the fashion elective after taking inspiration from the ever moving element of water, we had to narrow down our designs to 6 pieces which we must continue to develop with color and texture.
This is a video of primary research from a local river.
I tried to capture the surf and undulations of the water into some of my designs.
We will be choosing one main design from the 6 pieces above. I will continue to redesign these perhaps and play with colour and materials.
This park is the turf of the geese and you can’t convicne me otherwise. Today the herd allowed me to paint Plein Air at Vanderveer park; the weather today was perfect. There were so MANY GEESE. Check out the videos if you don’t believe me 😉 #hubnerart #pleinart #oilpainting #landscape #paintatthepark #parkpainting #pleinairpainting #pleinairsetup #geese #goose #geeseatthepark #waterart #natureart #pochadebox #artistlife #artistsummer #instagramartist #humor #funny #geeseturf #thisparkbelongstothegeese (at Vander Veer Botanical Park) https://www.instagram.com/p/CgkmXDHrW8z/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
Objective: “Dive into the heart of your chosen song (1 minute) and translate its rhythm onto paper using nature's tools as your brush. Explore how the texture, shape, and movement of natural materials can echo the energy, emotions, and themes of your chosen melody.”
The project’s secondary objective was to make a paintbrush using natural materials (leaves, ocean sponges, sticks, fibers, etc)
I chose this song:
Fluyendo by Ayla Schafer 00:30-01:30 minutes
It’s a water song that my mom likes to play when she’s high. She likes to say thank you to the ocean, and she also has a song for thanking the sun.
I love when she plays this one, it sounds like water and I think it’s so pretty.
I started by making three brushes.
I brought all kinds of materials because I was excited about the project. First, I made a paintbrush out of my own hair that I’ve been collecting for three months. I have a lot of medical issues so my hair was falling for a few months and I started collecting it as a joke but also to gauge how much was falling for my doctor. My hair stopped falling recently, so I didn’t need to collect any more, and it felt weird throwing my hair in the garbage, and there wasn’t enough to make a hair extension or something so I decided to use it for this project.
I started by organizing the hairs on a piece of tape, I estimate having placed 300 hairs before my fingers got tired.
I bent this amount in half, then in half again, about three times. Then I cut off the rounded parts of the folds and glued the hair to a stick. It didn’t feel sturdy enough, so I attempted to cut up a Canada Dry can I found outside and use it to hold everything together, kind of like the tin bit at the end of a pencil. This was not only ugly, but super in effective, so I covered the whole thing in tape and hot glued a few layers of twine around everything to make sure it wouldn’t fall apart. This made for an ugly paintbrush. Also, my hair is dyed and bleached and overall not the healthiest so it didn’t absorb much ink. This paintbrush was a failure but that’s okay!!
Next, I taped a sea sponge that the professor bought to a stick. That’s paintbrush #2. Then I glued some leaves I found outside my house on some kind of fern looking bush to a stick. That’s paintbrush #3.
For the canvas, I cut up newsprint and multimedia paper into a circle. I did this by holding a nail tied to a pencil in the center of the page and using it like a big compass.
It’s not perfect, but hey, my scissors suck and also I probably didn’t do the compass method that well.
Next, I poured 6 cups of ink. The first cup was 90% water, the second was 75% water, the next was 50%, and so on until the 6th one was pure ink. This was for more control over values. I ended up readding water to all of them to not waste more ink, and also it’s a water song, so whatever.
After that, I sat on the floor in front of my paper-circle-canvas-situation, and began spinning the paper in front of me slowly as the song played. One full rotation of the circle was about a minute of the song, and then I would restart the song and keep spinning from where I left off.
I started with the edges, using a feather brush (paintbrush #4, pictured above), and doing a flowing motion with my hand that matched the beat of the song (not the singer’s voice.) I used the wateriest ink pool.
I did it like this, and I noticed my flows/loops seemed to rise in height as the beat/background instruments got louder. I trusted my body a lot for this process and let myself be moved by the music as much as possible. I felt like the moment I tried to control my strokes the work would no longer be an authentic representation of how I felt listening to it.
After this, I used the sponge brush and feather brush to paint the artist’s vocals, all still while slowly spinning the canvas. This was flowy, and clear. The following image shows the feather brushed background instruments (outer edges of circle) and the vocals (inner squiggle). There are some sparse squiggles between these two edges, and they represent the few times the singer says “agua” very gently and softly at the beginning of the minute I chose.
Next, I used the leaf brush to “smack” the drum beats down when they came. I did this using the ink pool with zero dilution. There are a lot of drums. Then I added more for good measure. And some more while spinning the stick, also. Drops remind me of water and I had ink leftover, so I used the rest of the watery inks just making drops. To be honest, I was having fun. That’s all, thanks for reading!!
My next post shows it moving :)
MATERIALS: Newsprint, ink, human hair (~400 strands/2 months of collecting), canada dry can found outside, hot glue, masking tape, twine, sea sponge (from professor), fluffy plant (from professor), sketchbook paper 8x11, sticks, leaves from bush in front of my house, water, string, nail, song
In reference to our new project Movement, I'm researching this artist. He captures motion/movement in many ways using various techniques and props. His results evoke curiosity and leads to many questions as to the how?..of his techniques.