Concept - Frottage

For this technique I looked at the art of Max Ernst who first used the technique of frottage [1]. To do this, you lay a piece of paper over a texture such as grained wood then take a rubbing using a soft pencil. Ernst used this to create strange creatures such as  'L'évadé' (The Fugitive) [2] 

To make my piece I used textures from around the studio, the floor, wood cabinets, speaker case and woodcut carvings.

 


From these I made an image of a turkey-like bird, using the gingko leaf as a head and the card-reader embellishment as an eye, the other textures for the body and feathers.

I am pleased with my image and discovered that frottage is an interesting way of using texture and collage in my work so it will be something I experiment with in the future.Using natural shapes works best and looks most appealing (the gingko leaf makes a very good head shape from the way the stem curves into a small beak shape)

Ernst uses pencil to work into his collaged image to create a more comprehensive image that looks like a finished drawing. Although my bird does not need this, it is a useful note to consider for future uses.

References
[1] Ernst 1925
[2] Ernst 1926


Bibliography

MOMA. 2016. Max Ernst, L'evade. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/max-ernst-levade. [Accessed 12 December 2016].

Wikipedia. 2016. Frottage (art). [ONLINE] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frottage_(art). [Accessed 12 December 2016].