Pattern Recognition
Friday, March 30th, 2012
This piece started out as tiny bead-like droplets of salt-infused ink on the paper. The salt crystals that grew were small and black, evenly spaced across the ink circles, and the ink was actually coating the salt so they hardly sparkled at all. I took a wet brush and idly doodled the uppermost right-hand pattern by re-wetting the ink and drawing it out in three long, swooping lines. Using water to separate this ink shows off its complex color structure of blue and orangey-brown, and so I used the same method to make patterns around the rest of the ink dots as well.
Since I gently dissolved some of the ink off of the salt crystals, they regained a tiny bit of sparkle, so this image that could have been boring black and white had I made it with pen and ink, has a three-dimensional, full-color palette of tiny details. Sometimes it’s worth it to do things the ridiculously complicated way.
Pattern Recognition, 5″x5.25″ ink and salt on paper, $234 framed, with free shipping.
The detail shot below shows off both the color variation in the “black” ink, and the dull shine of the tiny salt crystals. To give you a sense of scale, the entire design in this photo is about the size of a quarter.
I haven’t yet framed this piece, it’s just a tiny bit too big for a 5″x5″ frame, so it’ll get mounted into a larger 8″x8″ frame before going to its new home.
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Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art
Tags: brush and ink, for sale, ink, salt