Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Image Transfers-Sketchbook experiments

I'm trying the image transfer technique using all types of medium gels, and images from magazines But it takes time to dry fully, so it's a slow process. What I do is smother the gel medium on the image I want to transferred, then paste the image on a gessoed surface. I find priming the paper with gesso makes the surface more durable. When the pasted image completely dry, I scratch the back side of the image with a sandpaper, then spritz some water, and start to rub and peel away the paper. This will be quite messy. But worth the rub. Once you've finished the rubbing, you can start collaging, like what I do in my sketchbook pages.

This is my previous study on "florae". I collaged the images using the simple cut and paste technique, as well as interlaying them with some image transfers. I finish with some acrylic colors and gesso.



This is one of my favourite. I pasted a portrait image from a magazine over a papercut out of chinese medicine inlay. The crinkled texture of the paper as well as the rubbing to peel away the transfer created a distressed effect onto the portrait. The portrait image also appear transparent.




All of the images are random. I still do not have any particular theme. In this piece, I scribbled "Ballet: woman as a creature between life and death" . I read an article titled Cinderella Complex by Shahab Navi, and upon reading that I coincidently had the image with me and join the two together. On the upper side of this piece, I transfered two images of two influential leader( which I do not their names), and also a sign post overlayed on across them just because it will look interesting.


One of a method I use for random image is to write one word (from my thoughts) on each page of the blank sketchbook. On the bottom right of this page, I wrote "creature". ( It was taken from a phrase "women are complex creatures")Without paying attention to the word, I start to transfer the random images, and applying paints and gesso. I took a pencil and start scribbling...and an image of an elephant pops out! "Hey that's the creature I was looking for!"

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