Ancient Places?

marri · Joined: 28 Aug 2009 Posts: 267 Location: Western Australia

This is my most recent - resin dripped over wet enamel paint. I had decaying rock and ancient landscapes in mind.

thecatsgrin · Joined: 18 Apr 2009 Posts: 2181 Location: Gippsland

That is fantastic!!!
Love the effect!

gggraph · Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 9:54 am Post subject: Re - Ancient Places?

Very cool effect - it looks like an invasion of limpets.

Grant

Devilbiss · Joined: 06 Jul 2007 Posts: 3214

This looks great, I like most of the work your posting now.
The colours appeal to me more.

Jade · Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 10:49 am Post subject: Re - Ancient Places?

This is pretty cool, would be ace to see in rl what with the enamel and resin. Reminds me of protozoas...ah the good ol' days

pugwash · Joined: 04 Jul 2007 Posts: 1380 Location: Perth

I love this one Marri. If you're looking for a name, it reminds me of an aerial shot of the Bungle Bungles.

The Pook · Joined: 01 Feb 2007 Posts: 2904 Location: Tasmania

Unique!

marri · Joined: 28 Aug 2009 Posts: 267 Location: Western Australia

thanks Wedny, Grant, Mike, Jade, Clive, and Pook. Interesting thing about this one is that reactions vary but are always something natural - lichen, aerial view of landforms (mud lakes and bunglre bungles), decaying rock, limpets (love invasion of the limpets!), etc.

I will do a another of these with bright yellow background, then start to play about with the effect.

belle2 · Joined: 21 Jan 2010 Posts: 189 Location: Newcastle

This is your best yet!

marri · Joined: 28 Aug 2009 Posts: 267 Location: Western Australia

Talk about frustrating. A while back I posted "I will do a another of these with bright yellow background, then start to play about with the effect". That's all well and good but the only paint that seems to create the effect is orange. Yellow doesn't work at any dilution of resin or paint. Red doesn't work either. To make matters worse the label has come off the tin of orange enamel, so I don't know the brand or colour name.

I suspect the difference is that my red and yellow are enamel bases, that is, they are the factory made base colours the hardware adds tints to. The orange is a tinted yellow base. I suspect the stuff in the tint that stops it drying in the "tint machine" is what makes the difference. Anyone got any other ideas? It does not seem to be temperature as the orange works in a variety of temps.

Mojo · Joined: 01 Jun 2010 Posts: 20 Location: Melbourne

I hope you can work out a solution. I would like to see some experiments with the resin on a matt background as well as the other colours your thinking of. What sort of resin is it? Like a polyurethan coating or the stuff you set things in?

marri · Joined: 28 Aug 2009 Posts: 267 Location: Western Australia

Mojo, I experiment with local plant resins. I use grasstree and marri resin. both dissolve in metholated spirits and behave quite like shellac.

Eug · Joined: 15 Jun 2010 Posts: 208 Location: Melbourne

Hi Marri, just a quick question about the plant resins that you use in your work. Where do you actually source them from? I used to live in central NT and know that spinifex resin is obtained from actually burning the grass to extract the resin. Is this a similar process to what you do, or is there somewhere that you can actually buy the resins that you use? Either way, you get some fantastic looking results in your work. Cheers, Eugene.

marri · Joined: 28 Aug 2009 Posts: 267 Location: Western Australia

Hi Eugene, the marri resin I can find crystallised on the trunk of the tree. The grasstree resin I find as blobs on the ground around the plant. So both are easy to source, however, the marri resin is time consuming because I only get a dessert spoon or two each tree and not every tree has resin oozing out of it. I go into a fair bit of detail in the wetcanvas thread posted below. The explanation starts on the second page.

cheers, Bill

http://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=617386

Eug · Joined: 15 Jun 2010 Posts: 208 Location: Melbourne

Hi Marri, I had a look at the link and it's all making sense. It's got me thinking what other types of plant resins may be usable as well. And the chemist in me is thinking about what would be suitable solvents to increase/stabilise drying times, without causing serious health problems of course. Thanks very much for the info!