Recently, I
have been looking at Cy Twombly’s body of work as I like the kind of marks and
textures that he manages to achieve in his work. I have been wanting to create
a piece of work that mimics his kind of marks and textures in order to convey
my theme across to the viewers. I wanted to use his marks to show chaos and
pain in my piece to illustrate the fact that I am against animal cruelty and
that it is barbaric and inhuman.
To start off with, I used red
acrylic paint to create small experiments that showed different marks and
textures. I placed the paper upright as this would allow me to paint with more
control and I was able to paint in a similar way to Cy Twombly. I managed to
complete six different experiments that had different textures and marks. I
thought that the most successful experiments were the ones that were freer and
less controlled as this allowed me to acquire a more chaotic outcome. This was
similar to Twombly’s work as although some of his pieces appear childlike, the
marks are also energetic and uncontrolled. I really liked the techniques that
involved using a dry brush and the splatting technique. I thought that these
allowed me to convey my message successfully and effectively. However, I think
that some of the marks were very basic which is why I then went on to develop
them and create more interesting pieces that resembled the style of Twombly’s
work.
I
was able to combine my favourite outcomes from the initial experiments to
create more powerful and interesting artworks. I thought that there was a lot
of depth created in some of these experiments as the differentiation in tone
created an almost 3-D form. I thought that the most successful development was
the one where I used a dry brush technique in the background and then splatted
paint on top of the dry brush layer. The layer of dry brush created the
impression of pain, stress and chaos as the rough, dry texture made me think of
scratches (of something trying to escape). I then liked how the splats created
the idea of blood of an animal; I think this strengthens the power of the piece
and shows the pain and torment that an animal would feel when being abused by
its owner. After having witnessed the effects of animal abuse, this is what I
took from the situation and I want other people to understand the repercussions
of animal cruelty. However, I wanted to develop my work further and see whether
ink would allow me to get more contrast in marks and tone in order to recreate
the style of Cy Twombly’s work.
I
started off by making some initial experiments with red ink and seeing whether
I can get the same marks, textures and tones as Twombly did in his pieces.
However, I got the same result as before; the best techniques involved
splatting and using a dry brush. This is why I then went on to combine these to
see if I could get the same amount of depth as I could with the acrylic paint.
I think that by layering the ink, I could achieve a high amount of depth and I
think that this resembled Twombly’s work more than the acrylic experiments as
he layered his work to show depth. However, I think that it didn’t show enough
texture as there was nothing coming out from the page; I wanted the splats to
appear like they were still dripping, even when they were dry. Therefore, I
went on to combining different materials together to achieve the right amount
of depth, contrast in marks and the right texture.
As a result of combining some
materials (for example: acrylic paint, ink, PVA glue and water), I was able to
find out what materials work best together to get the best possible outcome for
each layer. The best combination for the dry brush technique included, red
acrylic paint, PVA glue, black ink and a small amount of red ink. This allowed
me to get the right consistency to show how rough and chaotic animal cruelty
is. The fact that I have combined materials, means that my artist link has been
strengthened as Twombly also combined some materials. As I wanted the texture
to be rough, I didn’t put a lot of PVA glue in the mixture as this makes the
dry outcome shiny – this is not what I wanted. After having found this out, I
then went on to combining the mediums again to see what was the best to create
the splatting technique. The best outcome included, red acrylic, red ink and
PVA glue. I used a lot of PVA glue as I wanted the dry outcome to appear shiny
and to resemble fresh blood. I think that the consistency helped the paint to
drip and it also showed a lot of contrast in marks, even though some of them
were accidental. However, I think that some of Twombly’s marks were also
accidental which is why my work resembles his.
Finally,
I created a final outcome of those techniques and combinations that I thought
were the most successful. I really liked the outcome of this as I think it
showed a lot of variety in marks, tone and texture. Despite the fact that some
of them are controlled, they are still quite free and accidental, which is
similar to the marks that Cy Twombly uses in his work. The dry brush technique
illustrated a lot of chaos, frustration and pain which is something that I
wanted to show in my work. Whilst the splatting technique resembled dripping
blood which conveyed the idea of torment and mistreatment of the animals (this
will be reinforced by the depiction of a cat that will be on top of this
piece).
