Paint by Number- Prototyping

mockup paint by number of original painting

In thinking through the potential paint-by-number exhibit, I am interested in one representation of the work to be a mobile that can rotate in space. To make this work, would need to find a material that would be rigid enough to hold and not curl, yet light enough so as not to overload the structure. Earlier this Spring I accidentally ordered the wrong type of mylar for a friend's gift. We use mylar 4 mil mat film in the office for survey prints that get recorded at municipalities or the registry of deeds. The past several years I've been trying out various media on that film for landscape presentation drawings- acrylic paint and water color pencil. 4mil mylar holds the pencil line well, and you can apply color to either side. It is nice in that it doesn't wrinkle or crimp when water or paint is applied. The result is super tactile and great in person, but the sheen tends to get in the way of scanning or photographing.

The 4 mil mylar is what I thought I had ordered for the friend as part of a watercolor pencil art kit, but instead what arrived was mylar acetate. A stiffer plastic, which takes paint, but no pencil and is used for stencils. The friend was gracious and understanding and gave me time to track down the right kind of mylar film to swap out with the mylar acetate I had previously gifted.

As I sat down in the studio, to start working towards the mobile, I had thought the mobile would use aluminum panels which I can gesso and paint on. Turns out the Aluminum panels ended up being heavier than anticipated; I was tempted to try a smaller dimension of cell size, but this would be about 144 individual pieces to manage, and would deviate from the uniform size in the rest of the exhibit.

As my eye circled the studio, it fell upon the mis-ordered stack of mylar acetate. I thought I'd give it a try instead. It certainly was rigid, and lighter than aluminum. Since it won't take pencil, but is translucent, I placed it on top of the template and used sharpie markers to fill in-between the suggested lines from the paper below the mylar.

Mylar + Sharpie + Gesso

I picked three tones from a sharpie neutral pack and used an angled stroke to fill inbetween the lines. The hardest part was deciding which shape would belong to which tone. The sharpie dries darker than it goes on. And the gesso adds a bit of cool contrast to the warm tones selected. So many color combinations to try further. Blues and purples, greens and pinks! But first the neutrals.

The reflectivity and sheen of the mylar and sharpie don't sit right with me, and in a moment where I wasn't sure if I would destroy what was working about the prototype, I decided to gesso the lighter bits. Liking how that worked, I then tried it over the medium tones; liking it less, I then scraped it off with a paper towel. The gesso wash helps expand the textural range on the front. Also, depending on how dry the marker is- affects how much the marker color bleeds into the gesso wash.

Next to figure out how to deal with the back. Any color applied to the back will make the color on the front darker and could change the read of the composition. But the sheen is really distracting if this were to rotate in a mobile. So I tried applying a gesso wash also to the back of the mylar and sanding it down.

It's a tad bit better, but I am not sold yet. This treatment is to be continued.

In the process of this prototyping I noticed that the sharpie linework is also really clean before filling these shapes in. I am trying a few squares with just linework on both sides giving depth to the material and line without filling in the space in-between. For example a warm tone line color on the front with a cool tone line color on the back brings a shadow and dimension to the line itself. My gut may go that route for the mobile due to the legibility of both sides. And use the tone studies as part of the exhibit on the wall.

Since these are the same size as the gridded canvas, they can be placed in the same framing systems developed for the canvases. I did place a piece of foam core behind this mockup to give it a tad more depth.

6"x6" mockup one square of the three-tone landscape study

There's something raw about the washes of gesso on top of the sharpie. I may also, apply washes of paint over this and rub them off to built up texture- you can see that already on some areas where I tried that. The texture being informed by the paper towel and beads of gessoed water.

What I've learned from this prototype-  Mylar acetate is definitely something to explore further for displayed art. It has potential to layer up both sides as well as interact with backlighting, depending on how it is displayed.