Continuing my exploration of William Kentridge's processes, particularly his use of ink, I was interested to read an article on the Tate website titled 'The deliberate accident in art' where Christopher Turner discusses how an "accidental blot, the chance mark, or the naturally occurring stain can be a starting point for some extraordinary art".
Continuing my exploration of William Kentridge's processes, I've been watching some great videos of him online and really love how he uses black ink, on its own with a brush - to just 'play on paper'. He talks about not necessarily knowing where the image will end up. It invites us to ask - what can I see? To find the form within the forms. This is a method I use in my sessions with teachers as it helps to loosen up creatively.
I made some key notes from Christopher Turner's article:
"Ever since Leonardo da Vinci urged artists to search for inspiration in the dirt on walls or the streaked patterns in stones, they have found that the accidental blot, the chance mark, or the naturally occurring stain can be a starting point for some extraordinary art".
"Searching for meaning in chaos"
"Cultivated chance"
"Creatures of chance"
"...blots designed to trigger free associations"
"the tension between accident and intention"
I often experience a tension myself between painting or drawing recognisable forms, and yet staying connected with process led mark making - and this is something young children often encounter too. My work with teachers and schools gives me insight into the classroom - where a teacher can sometimes be outcome orientated and a child struggles to see the merits of accidents.
After reading the article and having explored the way Kentridge works with ink, I had a go at just simplifying what I was doing and making some marks on paper with ink to see what emerged. I wanted to then bring this experience to a teacher training session I was planning at the time.
I did a wash along a concertina folded paper, followed by a continuous line (or thereabouts) of black in over the top. It struck me that it was reminiscent of a procession of figures and reminded me of a sculptural piece in Kentridge's exhibition of a similar nature. I wasn't consciously aware of this piece as I was painting but it reminded me of it afterwards so I think on some level it was brought into it!
I like the stark quality of the black ink against the white paint. These were done in my sketchbook and on loose sheets of A3 sugar paper.
What I found most successful about these was the freeing aspect of just working with one simple material. It was a welcome break from thinking not just about laying/mixing/colliding materials but also ideas too. I used neat black sumi ink and began with very simple mark making.
I slowly began moving towards indicating more representational forms but didn't add any other materials. I think the variation of line here adds interest and depth.
Trying to indicate a sense of place and scale/distance but still keeping mark making at the centre and not thinking too much. Working in this experiential and intuitive way worked well for me with these sketches.
Towards the end of the experiments I ended up with this one and liked how it could have been a mono or screen print - the ink is so effectively dark on the paper.
It's given me some ideas of where I'd like to take this ink. I'd like to see what varying its saturation and possibly combining with some gouache would do in terms of depth, without compromising the pleasing simple form of black ink on its own.
January 2023
As I form my study statement and continue to see experimentation as a central path on this course, I have started looking at concertina sketchbooks (or at least folding strips of paper to create the effect) and how this impacts my practice based research.
I find something really liberating about working on lots and lots of separate sections of mark making, and really not thinking too much about what I'm putting on there. I think the key to this is the lack of pressure that comes with sheet quantity. The more there are the less final they seem. I tried the following with cartridge paper and actually it was a little thin so has warped more than I would like. I'm going to start some more on watercolour paper and experiment with layering, sticking other papers on top.
