Collaboration Work - Large Scale Pieces

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We had a bit of a think before Sophie and I started another collaboration piece, and we decided to be very ambitious. Even though the scale we were working at was rather large, especially to what Sophie was used to, we decided to unroll a sheet of paper the length of our studio wall. We were also working with a slightly different shape, as other large work we had done was usually approximately square or small oblong.

To make it slightly easier, we decided to use this long space to create a story of sorts, like the myths some of my creatures are from. The left side was to be in a fiery hell where the evil creatures dwell; however, further along the page you went, it would become lighter, until you got to a side with light happy creatures. The majority of my previous designs were on the dark side, therefore that side was to be painted, and the majority of Sophie’s animals were on the light side so she would add her pattern to that side. However, we decided to merge our techniques also, I would paint the background and do a wash over her animals, and Sophie would add some pattern with her chalk pens on my side.

This piece, due to its size, is not yet finished. However now that we’ve started and gotten a fair bit done, we are very determined to finish it soon.

In addition, before our assessment, we wanted to get another big piece started. We decided to be very precise with this one and measure the edges and cut them straight to create a perfect 80”x80” square. We put all our wolves together for this piece and before either of us started our painting/drawing, we put a purple wash over all of the paper rather than doing it after so the paint wouldn’t run and the pen would stay as dark as possible. I decided to paint Skol and Hati the typical colours that are associated with the entity the chase through the sky. Hati is blue/purple with white flecks to represent stars in the night sky, whereas Skol is golden and red like the fire of the sun. We also wanted to make this piece more of a scene rather so it doesn’t look like we have just plonked the images on the paper without thinking. So we added the sun and moon in the middle of the page, and we want to add something at the bottom of the paper as well but we haven’t decided what yet. Since looking at the work of James Ensor and his scenes, this has made me think more about filling the rest of the page, not just plonking it on the page, like the first few tattoos a person would get would have to be plonked.