String Pull Painting Experiment

One of the many benefits of sorting through art materials is that you find things you’d forgotten about. I’d done some string pull painting with my son as one of our many art projects during the first COVID lockdown.  We covered yarn with black acrylic paint, sandwiched them between a sheet of folded paper and pulled it out to create interesting patterns. I’d forgotten about them until my paper sorting project last week.

I took one of them out with the intention of using it as a substrate for my ICAD project, as it was made on mixed media paper. But as I was sitting at my art table, I started coloring in the shapes with my Caran DAche Neocolor crayons and was equally fascinated and a little disturbed by the resulting design.

The next step, as with all the pieces I don’t know what to do with, was a trip to the gelli plate. I added a few layers of Golden Open acrylic paint, which toned down the intensity and added some texture.  Then, I played with dripping several colors of acrylic ink, because I wanted even more lines.  

I’m not sure I even like the final result, but it’s a reminder that so much of what is fun about art is the process of experimentation and play. I ask myself, “What happens if I….?” and keep pushing forward.  Often, I push too far and end up with something unidentifiable that ends up in the garbage, but sometimes, like with this one, I have something new that might work really well if I just keep expanding on the original idea.