Early this summer I tried a little experiment…
It was fun and pretty much all turned out to be a mess. Oh well, maybe someday deep in the future something will come of it!
The experiment grew out of interest in an artist named Marla Stoddard Hayes. I saw her beautiful art on a gallery website years ago. I was lucky to find her sharing her latest art practice with natural inks from plants and metals on instagram. It’s messy and fascinating! I love the elementalness of it…yes, I just made that word up;) I’m always curious about playing with metal in art making. Someday I hope to learn to weld…but that will be a post for another summer day!
This wasn’t all new to me. I once made stain with steel wool & vinegar. *It’s really easy…just pour some vinegar over steel wool in a glass jar and wait. You’ll get brownish/grey stain that makes wood look aged. Anyways…I’ve always wanted to try doing it with copper. It’s supposed to produce a beautiful blue/green.
I’d been on the lookout for some left over copper scraps for an experiment. I thought I was good to go after spying copper staples on card board boxes. I spent more time than I want to admit pulling them out with a screw driver till I had a nice little pile. Honestly, along the way I started to be suspicious they were only “copper” coated but sometimes “wishful thinking” can just make you believe! So…I poured on the vinegar and forged ahead;)
Obviously…from the photo below I didn’t get any beautiful blues.
Ah! Life!
I almost sure it’s Iron oxide.
This creative tangent with scraps of old watercolors lead to an intense amber “trash pile” of blotchy paper. It took on a sort of rusty leatheriness that I actually think could be interesting. I tried lots of techniques from scraping and scoring the paper to wrapping it in thread, wire and netting. I also snipped a few garden cuttings to press into the rusty concoction. Just to see what would happen!
And…there are always diamonds to be found even in experiments gone awry!
Like the interesting markings left behind from netting and the ghosts of plant patterns. I’m especially interested in the way the color pops over the black paint. And, there is the potential to someday combine this in some way with my “pintalism” experiments.
Nothing is ever really wasted.
I’ll file this all away under “hmm.”
And…I’m still on the lookout for copper scraps temping me with ever elusive blues;)
“They bring diamonds and rust.”
