car rims

car rims

following the Cartists exhibition I was inspired to bring my art from the sketchbook to a more relevant medium that represents my theme as much as my art does. the exhibition features artists using cars as a canvas, however since that isn’t possible for me I went to a tip shop and purchased car rims cheaply. I then took the rims home and cleaned them to prepare them as art surfaces and also to prevent them from dirtying any surfaces that they come into contact with.

1

for this I decided to create a landscape with a horse silhouette over a moon, I would create this using spray-paint since I have used this technique before to create similar scenes, in addition to this spray-paint would also hold better on the surface. however this scene did not go entirely as planned and did not have the intended appearance, I had planned to work over it to attempt it again, however after having peer review it they suggested that I keep the current composition but draw over it. as a result of this feedback I decided to doodle a design onto the existing piece using acrylic pens and whatever thoughts came fist as inspiration. this piece initially was a shambles until there was intervention and advice, making me realise the importance of planning within my work.

plans

following the previous composition I decided to create new designs to evaluate before applying them onto the car rims. this allowed me to find a method that would be the most effective considering rescores, shape, form and representation. after creating several designs I decided on this design that I liked the most:

horse final resolution

to continue using timelines to represent transport I have designed this to represent that, using techniques I have used before of spraying over plate fragments to create a mix of harsh and soft lines as well as stencilling to create the cog patterns and silhouettes, then refined using white acrylic pen. this piece depicts a horse in the centre, encircled by gears, this on the car rim is another representation of the timelines to represent the beasts of burden, the age of steam and the modern era.
taking this plan into action I started by spraying the rim black and covered the centre with paper to prevent is from being affected while I placed cogs onto the surface while it was still tacky, this would prevent them from sliding off and sprayed the surface with red, blue silver and gold, I then placed fragments of broken plates and sprayed over with black, the plate fragments were then removed and the colours applied a second time so that the difference in the black and colour is not so harsh, while still wet I removed the cogs so they would give a smudged appearance and blend well with the background. to create the centre I placed the inverse of stencil used to cover it so that all but the middle was covered, I then placed the horse stencil within this, after placing these stencils I sprayed black and gold paint into the centre without giving them time to dry, this allowed the paint to bleed somewhat through the horse stencil giving a metallic piebald effect and the paint could be ran to prevent an even blend. however the horse did not stand out as much as intended so I outlined sections so that it would stand out more.  

mod rock

in an attempt to allow the surface of the car rims to be replicated I covered on of them in cling film and then mod rock, the aim was that the mod rock moulded to the shape of the car rim and could be easily reproduced, allowing for different art styles to be used without wasting any of the car rims being used. however after making an allowing the impression to dry it became apparent that this took far more rescores then it was worth since each overlay created took up more mod rock than expected and thus more money would have to be spent had I continued with this method. despite this I decided to test the surface anyway and found that inks easily bleed through it. in summary I will definitely not be using this process again.