I wanted to try to convey how the plight of the bees is actually one small indicator of the struggles of a much larger natural mechanism which holds the entire ecosystem together. I thought I could do this using clockwork elements which not only small and delicate, but require perfect tuning and for all areas to be working perfectly to produce a working clock.
My eventual plan for my prints from this workshop was to implement them as part of my street campaign in wheatpaste. I have never used screenprinting for pasting before, as previously I have always used digital printing as this was most accessible. I am quite interested to produce some traditional media pasteups in this way, and think it will give my work a much more physically authentic quality. As at this stage we are working in A4, my wheatpastes will not be very big, however I researched 'Subtle Street Art' (click here) as a way of using lots of small images to make a big impact. I hope to use the bees for exactly a piece of art such as this, hitting the city with lots and lots of the same pasteup, like a swarm of bees descending.
I eventually decided to have the clockwork components and honeycomb as geometric background shapes, as this would not only be inkeeping with my street style which uses geometric shapes frequently, but would also give a sense of the the fact that bees are just one part of a larger fabric of other factors.
From my first PRINT workshop I studied Chinese art and learnt that each artist has a set of materials known as 'The Four Treasures of Study' and how this use of high quality, specialised tools gave ritualistic importance to the process of Chinese craft. I invested in one of the solid 'ink sticks' after this session but had not yet decided on a point to use them. I thought now would be the time, as I intended this design to the put on the streets en masse. By using these inks to eventually end up as street pieces I wanted to impart some of the ritualistic essence of Chinese art, and really put a little piece of myself into the painting process, which I hoped would translate onto the street itself.
Working with the ink stick was interesting, as it required me to grind the end of the stick into a small well of water, darkening the ink until it was the correct tone. Having control over the ink in this way was a different way of working to normal paints or inks, where the colour is laid down first and any water or medium is added afterwards and made me think differently about preparing my palette. The only problem I found with this ink was that it dried very quickly, and then required more water mixed in to return back to usable form. At first this was troublesome as it meant I had to keep remixing the inks, however the overall outcome of this was an ink piece with a very traditional quality, as none of the tones were ever quite the same when remixed with water.I added a little extra to my design by making the body of the bee composed of an hourglass, adding a time based element to the message of the image. The sand within the hourglass has almost entirely fallen through, suggesting that time is running out if we want to negate the effect of the damage we are doing.
I really like how this design came out and enjoyed the slightly altered processes that the Chinese ink stick made me use. Creating a fully tonal study was also a fun and refreshing change from my working style which is typically very colourful, with the softness of the Chinese inks giving my work an ethereal quality.
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