Friday, July 9, 2010

Painting with fruit and leaves

I'm taking an online Experimental Art Class with Amelia Critchlow, and one of the exercises is to use household items to use as paints and stains.  As I was putting the berries on my cereal this morning, I wondered what kinds of marks the fruit would make.  The bright pink was made by raspberries, and you can see the dark spots where the seeds stuck.  Blueberries didn't do much, so I searched the fridge and found sweet cherries.  The lovely little violet colored flowers with the yellow centers are the result of using the cherries.  (The yellow is Sharpie Marker -- along with raspberry colored pencil lines, the only non-organic media I used)  To make the leaves, I headed out to my herb garden, where the mint grows in cheerful profusion.  I had to experiment, but the best way to make a leaf print is to put the leaf with the underside (vein side) down on the paper.  I then covered it with an index card and burnished it with the back of a wooden spoon.  Voila! Leaf prints!
The only thing I don't like is the big blobby thing in the lower left hand corner.  The more I messed with it, the worse it looked.  But I learned what I don't want to do in the future!  Here's a close-up of the part I do like:

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