Beginning to look at Helen Frankenthaler's painting techniques and colour mixing

I have started to look at the way that Helen Frankenthaler uses colour in her compositions. Frankenthaler uses either, watered-down acrylic paint or thinned oil paint in her work. As acrylic paint is available to me at home, I have began to experiment with this.

At the top of the page I have painted an area to show what the paint looks like when there is no water added to it. Then, gradually, I added more and more water each time and noticed that the colour appears more translucent, hence making the colour seem lighter. I have identified which colours have been used in some of Frankenthaler's work, for example, the middle three blue colours - indicating the colours that have similar consistencies to the work.

On Wednesday, I have specifically concentrated on mixing colours from Frankenthaler's compositions. This way, I have a documented process that I can refer back to when I want to make these colours in the future.

This page of my sketchbook focuses on ' Blue Atmosphere', I have noted down exactly which brand and colour of paint that I have used and at what stage I have added water. I think this will definitely help me when it comes to working in Frankenthaler's style, as I will already know how to make the colours  that she uses.

Progressing from this, I am going to look at using the soak-stain technique onto my sketchbook to experiment with the new technique which spans across most of her compositions. This is where watered down acrylic paint is poured onto a surface (she used untreated canvas) and manipulated using items like sponges or cardboard. I am going to try this first in my smaller sketchbook, following on from the mixing, but I think I will need to use my bigger sketchbook to be able to carry this out effectively.

Working in the style of Mark Tobey

I have completed a series of experiments based on Mark Tobey's artwork, using charcoal, pencil and collage. Although these are not the materials he uses, I have chosen to use these as they are tonal and readily available. I am still yet to experiment with using paint in the style of Tobey.

Here is the process that I used in my experiments:

1) I began by building a tonal background that is similar to 'Untitled' (pictured on the left) using a soft charcoal as this can be manipulated easily by smudging and can be built up to create darker tones. I have used a horizontal motion when creating the lines as you can see horizontal lines through Tobey's composition. I tried to keep the background relatively light as there were more layers that were going onto my experiment.




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2) Next, I cut out shapes of newspaper that are similar to the marks that Tobey makes in 'Untitled' (shown above) and stuck them down using glue. I chose to use newspaper when using collage as it adds more tone to the composition and I didn't want to add colour at this stage.

3) I then added fine pencil (6B) lines, in the loose, quick way that Tobey has. These lines are delicate and sporadic, which contrast the harsh charcoal. When creating these lines I noticed that the motion required to do this was similar to when I sign my signature. After, I added thicker charcoal lines which are in the same style as the newspaper shapes and have used the rubber to take away areas of the background to create a contrast between the off-white paper and the dark charcoal.
I progressed my experiments by using my signature and my Dad's signature in my work instead of the loose pencil lines. I have found that the change in signature alters the mood of the composition.