I have a bit of a war on my hands with Yupo, although I love its smooth texture and the way it makes paint swim and dance on its surface, I’m always trying to mess with it. Make it do things it doesn’t want.
I have this crazy idea that I can make Yupo perform similarly to a drypoint plate, except without the printing. I love the idea of carving out an image instead of building one up.
I find with watercolour I sometimes get bored with what I’m doing as I use too much water, making it take longer to dry and most efforts just go in the bin. On reflection, I may be a little abusive with all art materials …
I thought I’m going to give oil on Yupo another go to achieve a drypoint effect and contrast it against my watercolour on Yupo version.
As you can see I didn’t get too far with this. Although I initially loved applying thick, black layers of oil, scratching into it, and smearing it around, the heavier spots aren’t even dry and it’s been weeks. Applying watercolour or alcohol inks at this stage would be a disaster.
I also found that pulling and manipulating the oil around made my reference drawing disappear underneath as it was rubbed out of existence, which I did not like. It was also really messy, slippery and hard going, taking in the fumes from the turpentine all the while.
It’s a shame as I was liking the carved out polar bear head but the image was too much of an uphill struggle to really get rolling with it. One other thing I noticed, the coloured oil paints started to separate and go ‘gloopy’, which looked pretty awful.
Another experiment I tried was with water-based block printing inks. Contrasting this time with a regular watercolour on paper image. The aim with the Yupo this time was more of a mixed media experiment, I wanted to create that drypoint style whilst incorporating other materials I often use.
I firstly used alcohol inks to create more interest in the background (which I stripped as I found out that washing up liquid and alcohol inks don’t make for good bedfellows, oops).
I then applied the black, block printing inks to the image which started out as quite abstract but rather foolishly, I fell into old ways and boom a full rabbit head appeared. It’s easy to get carried away in art. After the block printing ink was dry I went in with watercolour, Brusho and ink to finish it off.
I’m not pleased with the image itself, but I am pleased that I could carve and manipulate the block printing ink with absolute control, without the stink and without waiting weeks for it to dry, easily thinning or removing the ink with water or washing up liquid for tougher areas.
