This week I focused on figurative work, using various methods in an attempt to render faces.
Initially, I used masking tape to block specific parts of the screen, creating faces by foregrounding the negative space of the page. The outcomes were interesting in their individuality, each imbued with a personality created by the impromptu interaction of overlapping paint.
Though far from exhibiting true fidelity, these abstractions of the planes and lines of a human face were readable as such, achieving the goal of creating figurative work.
Pushing the screen printing process further, I created a series of stencils using acetate transparencies. I drew a simplistic portrait of a face on the transparency and then carved the lines and shapes with an exacto knife.
The goal was to achieve more curvilinear shapes and further explore figurative representations. With these outcomes the faces lost some of the depth of the previous portraits, but achieved a more nuanced, intriguing quality.