Exercise 3: Experiment with mixed media

With all the media I used I struggled to get the soft pink tone of the cup.

I decided to start off with a medium that I was used to and so chose watercolour. The paper I used with the watercolour was also not watercolour paper so the colour became distorted as the paper got wet so I just had to wait for my layers to dry before carrying on. Making the shadows was also a bit difficult because I felt I would either change the colour completely or it would end up becoming rather muddy.

The oil pastel was fun to work with and I liked the rich colours it made. It is the complete oposite of working with watercolour. Working in the tight spaces of the flowers was a bit difficult but I managed. It was also difficult to get a soft tone for the background since the oil pastels have such strong colours and I couldn’t find a close enough shade.

The first non traditional media I used was markers. I’d scribble woth my desired colours and then I went over with alcohol and that’s how I got the washed out effects. I layered the markers alcohol until I was happy with the result. For the cup I used a pink highlighter but it had no reaction to the alcohol. I then tried water to see if it would maybe react to that but I had to suck luck.

I liked how the borders of the objects seeped into one another, although it was not initially my intention. once everything was dry I decided to go over with a black pen and make rough outlines of the objects just to make them a bit more distinguishable. Creating shadows was also a bit difficult because it would just blend in to much. I also outlined he shadows but I now thing I perhaps should have not done so.

The last media I used was wax crayons. At first I didn’t really want to because I thought it would be a bit too similar to the oil pastels but then had the wonderful idea of melting the crayons. After colouring in an area I held it under my hairdryer but that didn’t really do much. I then started smudging it about with my fingers and liked the smooth texture it made so I carried on with that. I burned my finger but really enjoyed the outcome. I’m also happy with the veriety of colours i could make because I had very limited pallet.