Mixed media artwork process and thoughts
My life, as for most people the past few years, has been a roller coaster of constant changes, stress, uncertainty and debilitating insecurity that trickles down to every aspect of it. During this long process I needed to tackle numerous problems, one following the other and sometimes simultaneously. All the while I had to always give my best to my tattoo clients. Those people chose me among all the other choices they had and I needed to make sure I honour that choice, while struggling with inspiration, doubt and anxiety.
Don't get me wrong...I'm grateful that i can make a living doing what i love, but exactly because of how grateful I am, I had to prioritize tattooing over creating new art. However after almost two years of not having produced any new paintings, I realized I need to push through and do it anyways. I gave myself some time to recuperate, but lately I felt it's time to go back at creating physical media paintings, whether I felt ready or not.
I create my best when I create from within. It took two years to realize it but hey, it's never too late! So my trick to get myself inspired to start, was by creating something out of love and appreciation, so I started with a gift. Putting all my attention and effort into something that is very meaningful to me personally, knowing that it is intended to be gifted, gives me the illusion I might one day understand why I make art to begin with. Maybe the answer is right there, but I don't know...I don't know much!
Creating is a very personal act. The way people choose to create is a means based on their personal skill, but the cause is a manifestation of who they are inside. For some its poetry, for others music, or through photography or movement and acting. I don't consider myself a very good painter and I don't know if I'd be good in any other artform. What I know is that for whatever reason that I haven't yet dug into, I feel most at home, when I express myself with paint on some paper.
After finishing this piece I felt ready and energized to go on. My next one was a "safe" subject for me, since my tattooing focuses on Asian style art. So I chose my two favourite things: a hannya and orchids. In this article (after this long tedious personal introduction...!) I want to go through some parts of the steps of creating this artwork. I am using mixed media and since I don't have proper art training, figuring out how to use each media is a long trial and error process, that I felt could be relatable to share.
As per my intro for this blog, I learn from Youtube videos, art blogs, books, conversations with other artists and all sorts of craftspeople. I spend most of my time alone, always working on something, but I crave to share time and information with other people. Whether its by trying to get the people around me to share, act and create in a social manner, or by sharing through video or article myself, I keep pushing.
Thank you if you read all the above...it wasn't really necessary and you're either too bored or too curious, either of which is cool with me! Now let me show you some bits and pieces of how I went about creating this hannya that is currently my little pride and joy. I say little because its only 8.5 by 15 inches (22x38cm). The reasons I go for smaller pieces are mostly logistical, but I plan to move on to larger pieces in the future.
Ok off to the sparkles!
But what does it mean?
The Hannya is a mask used in traditional Japanese Noh theater. I've been reading about world masks through history and culture for a few years now. I find it's a very interesting concept for me for many reasons, that mainly have to do with my effort to unlock my own understanding of self perception.
"Hannya" means wisdom and there are a few explanations on why would the mask used to represent an enraged female demon be called wisdom. Whether it took the name of its designer, or was inspired by a play or simply that it took wisdom from the craftsman to build her, her name is probably the most well known of all the Noh masks.
I thought that "rage" is a pretty straight forward title for this piece as I'm terrible at naming artwork. I also am against explaining much about the concept because I don't like telling people what to think. A Hannya is a woman who turned into a terrible demon, orchids are delicate yet keep coming back to bloom even after being cut down to the bottom and gold and crystals form under great pressure and collision. It can convey one thing to one person and something else to another. For one person it might be pretty for someone else its ugly. I'm fine with whatever people make of it, and I don't want to have control of it.
My painting process
This has been my first serious attempt to paint with gouache. Up to this point I have been colouring with alcohol markers, but I decided to explore more mediums moving forward.
It was an arduous process at first but once I got the hang of it, time and progress flew by quickly. I used the same 300gr Bristol paper by Hahnemulle that I use for alcohol markers and even though there was a bit of curling, it wasn't bad enough to make it impossible. After the painting was fully dry and straightened under heavy books, the paper looked perfectly straight. The type of Bristol I use is very smooth so it resembles hot press watercolour paper.
The next step was applying gold leaf. I'm absolutely fascinated by the look of gold leaf. No surprise Gustav Klimt is one of my favourite painters and after seeing his paintings in person at the Belvedere Museum in Austria, I decided on the spot that gold leaf will be a part of my work too. Here I'm using Italian 22 karat transfer leaf, which is a much safer option than loose leaf for a beginner like me. Since the areas I am applying it on are flat, transfer leaf works perfectly fine. And yes, the brushing away of the loose bits was the most satisfying moment in this entire endeavour.
Too late to go back to it, I realized I don't have any footage of the pouring of resin, so I unfortunately can only show the final result of that step.
I recently decided to try out art resin and see what I can do with it. However since its very runny, it needs to be confined in a mould otherwise it will bleed out all over the paper. I managed to work around that issue by letting the mixture dry in the mixing cup for about an hour before using it. When it hardened enough to stay thick as I was pouring it, it would remain exactly where I placed it. For the middle "eye" I poured resin twice. I painted the red lines on top of the first layer and then topped it with one more to give it a suspended look.
And yes, finally, it was time for sparkles. I first started using pearls and crystals back in 2020 during lockdown. I had all the time in the world and since I couldn't care less whether "bedazzling" would render my work "cheap" I went for it. Its now an integral part of anything I do with physical media and even though it takes a LOT of time and patience, I feel its worth it.
Custom framing
I have been flirting with the idea of making the frame part of the artwork for a while now. I am a maximalist when it comes to framing for my own style of work. I fully understand how a very simple frame is what makes the art stand out but I think rules are not unbreakable laws, and as long as I am willing to bear the consequences of my decision, I should be free to break that rule.
I used an old wooden frame I had acquired a while back that happened to already be blue just like the artwork. My goal was to apply the gold leaf (imitation in that case) as unruly as possible to give the impression that it might have been gold in its entirety at some point in time. Or maybe as if gold was angrily splattered all over it. Again, what it looks like and what it conveys is closely tied to the subject of the artwork that I prefer to leave to the viewers discretion.
After I was done with the gold leaf, I used alcohol ink and dabbed it into the wooden frame. The point was not to have perfect coverage, to the contrary I wanted it to look imperfect and patchy. I also went over the gold leaf as well which tinted it in a way that made me think of a treasure found in a 17th century shipwreck.
I topped the whole frame with satin finish varnish to seal everything in.
Following the same relic aesthetic, I decided to put gold leaf on the glass on the inside and then scrape it off to make it look like its faded. I had done this before so I knew what look I was aiming for, however you can never know the exact result before it's done.
The combination of the damaged gold leaf on both glass and frame is a part of the artwork that was integral to its overall aesthetic.
Note that the back of the frame needed a lot of custom work in order to accommodate for the raised parts of the artwork. I turned this frame into a box frame which means there is a 0.5cm distance between glass and artwork and had a second raised layer of frame backing added to the back. That was necessary in order to fit both the extra glass/artwork distance and the thick backing mat the artwork was mounted on. In the future I'll make a video and article on mounting and framing.
And this below is the final result of my work, followed by a Youtube video you might find interesting watching.
Thank you for reading my thoughts and comments on my work process, I really I appreciate your time and support.
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