OCA Drawing 1 – Project 2, Exercise 3 – Experiments with Mixed Media

For my first experiment I revisited a technique I’ve used before, coloured oil pastels covering a surface, then white oil pastel over the top of the colours, then ink mixed with a little washing up liquid and water. Then once dry, I drew into the ink surface with a sharp stick.

The resulting drawing is quite rough but I like the colour coming through the black surface. I wanted to experiment with the process to see what different effects I would get by changing some of the methods of applying the surface.

I used two printed pictures cut from magazines, with one I applied white oil pastel over the surface and with the other I left this step out, then painted over them both with the ink/washing up liquid mix. I wanted to see whether the glossy finish would help or hinder the effectiveness of the ink top-coat. I wasn’t sure if it would sink in to the paper still or if the gloss would be similar to the white oil pastel – creating a barrier. I was able to scratch into the ink surface to create an image, and from the photo above it can be seen that this worked well. However, over time the ink has smudged a bit and hide the clarity of the image. This hasn’t happened where I used white pastel underneath the ink.

Next, I mixed some ink with PVA glue and water.

In the top image above, I coated the paper in coloured oil pastels again and painted the left side with ink mixed with just PVA glue and the right side with PVA glue and water. The side without water is much thicker and the lines I scratched into the ink are much more clearly defined. The ink wash with water is quite think and it was difficult to scratch continuous lines or break the surface at all in places.

In the middle drawing above I stuck scrunched up sugar paper onto paper by painting over it with the ink/PVA glue/water mix, I then drew over when dry with dual tip marker. On the bottom drawing I painted the ink mix straight onto the paper then stuck the sugar paper on top and drew on top with felt pen. Out of these three drawings I think the top worked quite well, I like the effect of the glue, ink and water. Without water the ink has more depth but it peels off quite easily. The bottom one worked well, I could have soaked the paper a bit more to achieve a more interesting background.

I tried a couple of things without ink too!

I tried a thick and thin watercolour wash. On the thicker wash, above, I drew on top while it was still wet with fine line pen, and I let the thinner wash dry before drawing on top and applying oil pastel over the top. I think drawing into the wet has produced an interesting effect, and I think there’ll be further uses for this in future drawings. The oil pastel over the watercolour wash gives a good texture, I’d like to experiment with drawing into the pastel.