Frottage Final Drawings

 “Femininity?”

18x24in Paper Cartridge (both drawings)

Drawing 1 - 6B Graphite pencil 

Drawing 2 - Prismacolour pencil crayon 

    For this project I decided I wanted to do my own personal experience with the concept of femininity, which although should not inherently relate to flowers (hence the question mark in my title) - it does for me. To be completely honest I struggled a lot with this project, mainly with figuring out what I was going to create with it. The whole concept of frottage threw me off because I had to create my art using things other then whatever skill set I held or what exactly I have in my mind. Relying on external sources (to rub and create the frottage) similar to how it is with sculpture was tricky for me and although I can see how it is a fun and interesting art form, I found it frustrating. I did a lot of testing on newsprint of a bunch of different surfaces and items with a combination of different drawing materials to figure out what worked and what didn’t, then began figuring out how to apply this to my feminine floral idea. Getting into the drawings I ended up doing, to be more clear they are based on femininity related through floral, shown in drawing one through the obvious use of flowers in a flower pot, and in the second drawing through a floral patterned bralette.

                    

                          Flower Pot

    For this piece I created I used different materials and surfaces, such as a palette knife, a compact hair brush, a screw, bathroom tiles, etc to create the flowers and flower pot as I go along. I wanted to see and experiment with how many different elements could still clearly represent a flower. It was fun to find things around my house that you have to look at and consider “could this be a flower?”, which led to my personal favourite detail of the bottom of a Starbucks coffee mug used as one of the flower middles. For the flower pot itself I used bathroom tiles because I discovered through testing on the newsprint that it actually appeared to look like cracked worn down ceramic, as well as wire netting from a paper shelf for the rim - wanted to make it look like as much of an actual pot as possible. This piece took quite a long time due to every different component but it was worth it for the interesting visual I was going for. 

Drawing 1

                         Bralette 

    For this piece I wanted to touch on the more indexical side of things by rubbing a pattern directly from the lace on my bralette onto the paper. I used a colour pencil crayon for this bralette (which is white) instead to create a clear bold visual contrasting the grey tones of the flowers in the flower pot (which should typically be bright and vibrant). I drew the vague outline of the bralette and then filled in the parts of it that has lace with the physical lace pattern itself, a pattern designed with many miniature flowers, I did this by maneuvering the lace over and over through the outline and rubbing it with the pencil crayon. I don’t favour/like the look of this piece as much as I do the flower pot one, but I do feel it fits the theme exactly as I intended so I can appreciate the simplicity of it. The one thing is that the pattern is tricky to see from farther away (as shown in the first picture), only when you get closer (shown in the second picture) do it become more clear, I can’t tell whether this is a good or bad thing so I guess it’s up to the viewer to decide.

Drawing 2