House No. 126: Achromatic Trio

House No. 126: Achromatic Trio

ink, pencil, and collage on repurposed matboard

8.75 in. x 6.5 in.
126/365; 05/06/11

The process that I used to make this piece started with a piece of vellum. It is very similar to a thick piece of tracing paper. It is actually used to diffuse light for photography, and I had a piece of it that had been damaged on a photo shoot that I was on. I had been holding on to it in my collections for awhile. 

I worked on both sides of the translucent paper before adhering to the matboard, which was another classroom salvage.

The white is correction tape that I pull out and transfer with a pencil to make varied lines. Again, I like that the process is indirect and makes me give up some control of the drawing. (This is something that I do a lot in class with my students, removing them from the direct process of mark making. It really frees up the artist to lose complete control.) The process is similar to printing and transferring.

I made the white, transferred marks with the correction tape on both sides of the vellum, and I colored with graphite to the point of going through the paper. I love how shiny the pencil gets on the smooth surface of the paper and how the marker soaks up the light almost completely, making the surface a very flat black.

The texture and quality of the surface, along with the change in tonality, indicates depth in a mostly flat drawing.