It’s been a bit of a weird week- I haven’t made as much progress as I’d hoped with this riso project but any progress is better than none at all! ♥
I’ve been looking at finalising my riso ideas, and while these are still fairly rough drafts I find it much easier to visualise a final concept in a neater, tidier visual style (e.g. I’ll be really finishing up the layout in the actual final piece process, which is much easier thanks to the flexibility of Procreate).
So far, I’ve got 4 potential ‘final’ layouts, each with differences that affect the way in which the artwork fills out the frame of the piece- since these will be A3, the actual image will be slightly smaller on each side (~2.5cm) due to the riso printing limitation. I’ve also begun to visualise how I can embellish these pieces (see the light gold coloured overlay on each piece for ideas on which areas I might work into- this is all TBC!).
One technique I thought would work especially well on the Japanese/Koi Fish print was kintsugi inspired embellishment (which I’ve begun to visualise in the final concept sketches). I came across this art form during my visit to the Durham University Oriental Museum, where there were examples of ceramics displayed utilising this technique. The result was beautiful, and the idea behind the process even more so.
Kintsugi is based around the idea that the imperfect is beautiful- while some of us in the Western world prefer things to be new, Japanese people relish repairing broken items and seeing beauty in imperfection. This also links to the wabi-sabi philosophy, which centres around the idea that imperfection and the transience and fragility of perfection is accepted- far different to the obsession with perfection we have in the West.
I’d love to incorporate this into my work, as I too have a fascination with perfect things- I think it’d add some nice little imperfections into my pieces. The fact that I’ll be embellishing these by hand will mimic the original technique; the rest of the imagery will be digitally produced and collated, printing using the risograph which is very ‘perfect’ despite some natural variance in the process.
I’ve also started to look at colour palettes and application for the final riso prints- since my palette is somewhat limited, I need to use my trusty Risotto colour swatch pack to look at alternative palettes that would work well. Since my artwork is mostly line-art based, I can use quite dark shades of the inks to intensify the line work while employing lighter, more subtle shades to add interest and shading.
This will be a target for the coming weeks after I’ve finished the base artwork- I’ll use Photoshop to manipulate the grayscale layers to view different colour palettes, which I’ll write about in my sketchbook.
I can’t wait to start properly visualising these finals… I’ll be using Procreate to render and layer my files ready for printmaking~
Blog post on this process coming soon! ❀
References
Carnazzi, S. (n.d.). Kintsugi: the art of precious scars [online]. Available at: https://www.lifegate.com/people/lifestyle/kintsugi [Accessed 21 Mar 2019].
Collingwood, C. (2019). China Risograph Print Final Concepts [digital].
Collingwood, C. (2019). Japan Risograph Print Final Concepts [digital].
Richardson, J. (2016). WABI-SABI and UNDERSTANDING JAPAN | A PHILOSOPHY AND AESTHETIC AS WORLDVIEW [online]. Available at: https://www.tofugu.com/japan/wabi-sabi/ %5BAccessed 21 Mar 2019].
Sydney Community College. (n.d.). Kintsugi – Japanese Ceramic Gold Repair [photograph]. Available at: https://www.sydneycommunitycollege.edu.au/course/kintsugi.gold.repair [Accessed 21 Mar 2019].
chalon joy collingwood 