Decay Art Project

I feel like my blog has been a little negative lately and, whilst I think it is important for me to be honest with you and myself about how things have been going, it doesn't make for fun reading! I hope this post can restore that a little and also let you know what I've been up to in my creating (and maybe even offer a little inspiration!)

About three years ago now, while at University, I was given the task of creating a project around a small area of London. This was both an interesting and exciting project, in theory, but I ultimately struggled with finding a natural conclusion to my research. The area I was in was fairly rundown and I managed to take a lot of photographs of decay. Unfortunately, despite all my best efforts, I wasn't able to come up with a final piece that I was happy with or that satisfied my fascination with decay. I think the major problem I had was that I was trying to make a graphic design (which is what I was studying at the time) project out of an art project.

Which leads me to where I am now...

I decided to go back and revisit my old sketchbook and see if there was any way to move forward with it. I also had some new materials and techniques I really wanted to try out that, luckily, really lent themselves to the subject matter of decay. Then it was just a case of experimenting until I felt like I had a clearer idea about how these materials and techniques worked and how I could implement them.

I used the piece of fabric from my Gesso on Fabric post. I painted paper, Mistyfuse and Lutrador with acrylic ink. I used Heavy Gel Medium to paste the paper onto the fabric and then used water to help peel any unstuck paper off.

I cut jagged edges into the Lutrador and some polyester fabric with a soldering iron. I then glued the polyester onto the image. I painted Xpandaprint onto my image in the places I wanted my Lutrador to go, then placed the Lutrador over the top. I heated the whole picture with a heat gun which made the polyester start to curl up, the Lutrador to break apart and the Xpandaprint to expand. I then placed my painted Mistyfuse over the top of the image and heated it again.

This piece was supposed to be a test, but I really loved how it turned out. Ironically, when it came to my final piece I started to struggle and am now stuck with a half-finished piece that I don’t know how to complete.

This was such an enjoyable experience for me. I haven’t created anything like this in a really long time, especially not something that I’m so happy with. Of course, it is frustrating to not have finished my purple piece, but I know I’ll figure it out eventually, I just need to take some time away from it for now so I don’t overthink it. I think part of the enjoyment was getting to expand on the work I’d done previously and finally feeling like I was making use of it, because it is something I’d been wanting to do for such a long time. It was also really nice to work from a sketchbook again (which is something I talked about more in my Getting Back into Using Sketchbooks for Development post) and I’m starting to feel much better and more confident about making art again.