Printing experiments of teddy bears and limes

As I  begun printing I  realised how much I enjoy doing it and how well the outcomes were. To start my printing I made notes from artists on what materials and objects they use, I wanted to keep in mind Yves Klien and Haris Lithos's work however they both use the naked human body and that is difficult to use in my art college. So I researched deeper into Haris's work and discovered he uses other object than human figures, I discovered his teddy bear work and decided to do work similar to him to see how he works and if I can experiment with other objects but in the style of him. I begun this experiment by buying three teddies, two were average size and one was a small rubber one. I got both of the larger teddies as I know I could use the colour black on one of them, this would make the teddy stained of black and I know I would be able to put a brighter colour on it, so I kept the other teddy for the lighter colours. However I didn't wash them as I know it would take a long time to dry and could possibly ruin them even more and make the fur dry and hard. I like the colour choice of the paper as it makes the teddies stand out even more, although to begin with my main aim was to just see what black would look like, however after seeing the result I thought about adding a little hint of colour. I chose bright colours as black was already very dark, yellow and pink were the colours I chose as shown below. These particular prints went well and continuing with the bear work is something I will enjoy.

  

These are more prints I created using only black ink. This was because I wanted to see what it would look like with black prints on white paper. As well as the larger teddies I experiment with other sized about such as a rubber teddy and a lime, these objects both created a very detailed print as the teddy had small rubber bit sticking out of its body and head, also the lime is a very textured fruit and has a lot of detailed on the inside of it, so both these objects worked well as they both showed a very detailed print that came out as a very freakish look to the prints. By experimenting with these objects it has given me ideas on other materials to use, as there are a lot of fruit that is very detailed and textured. 

The left image shows the two large teddies I used hung with string from a beam, I did this to let them dry as I didn't want to wash the paint of as I feel it made the teddies look more ghost like and fun. However by hanging them to me it gives a sense of them becoming another piece of art work to me, as the way they dangle and rotate creates a sinister and obscure look to them. For the images above I used the blue teddy as I only use dark colours such as black. So for the image below I used the pink teddy as I wanted a clean and unused object for the white paint, this was because I wanted to take out another experiment and use black paper and print a white teddy bear on it and only white. Although I stuck with printing, I changed my technique slightly as I looked back at my artists research, Yves Klien and discovered his smudging prints. This gave me the idea to do similar work that he has done but with an object instead , in this case a teddy. I feel this print worked well as it isn't just the same as the other paintings, it has more detail to it and much more excitement. I will continue with this technique and see how it will work with other materials.

Lastly after  testing out these materials I decided to change the way of working a bit. I chose to use bright colours and only bright colours when working with the lime and print over other colour using the teddy. Using different colours gave me another point of view at my work and made me see it in a different way to just using the colour black. It has made me see what colours work and what don't, for example the silver over certain colours such as the orange didn't look as good as I thought it would. I feel it mixed and discoloured the look of the teddy and took away the detail I wanted. However the lime work has helped me see what colours create the most detail and stand out the most. The white in my opinion goes well with the green paper, although the orange looks much more textured than the rest of the prints but over all I feel all the colours worked but just some not as well as others. The image of the lime nailed to the wall is the lime I used for the printing work. I used silver the last time I printed with them and it didn't work at all in my opinion, this was because it was too light and didn't show the detail. When using the lime I washed off each colour after experimenting with a different colour, I could do this with the lime but with the teddy it was hard as the teddy would take longer to dry and would not be the same afterwards to print with.