I then moved onto working with cardboard. I began by writing sentences across large sheets of cardboard with black paint. I wrote quickly to generate a greater sense of movement within my writing. I forgot to photograph the bigger pieces before I cut out the lettering but this is a left-over section;

I then cut out all the the lettering. I began experimenting, looking at the different shapes I could create, using the cut out letters which were based on the motion of my handwriting. Some 2-D arrangements;

And a 3-D arrangement;

When I cut out the lettering I was left with stencils, so i decided to spray paint sections of these on to paper. I deliberately chose to work on small paper as I wanted to focus on the curves and movement of the writing as opposed to the text itself. Some examples from my sketchbook;

[These should be landscape, but it's not working]

I then tried out some stenciling on newspaper sheets;

The stencils I used to make these;

After writing in water with ink was unsuccessful, I moved on to writing with ink in a glass bowl of oil. The ink didn't precipitate or run in the oil. The writing could be clearly read;

However I wanted to generate more movement and motion in the bowl. I began by writing another sentence vertically over the original. I then shook the bowl in an attempt to make the ink precipitate;

I proceeded to add bleach. This broke up the ink even more, which generated more movement;

But I wasn't finished yet. I added some orange ink to the mix;

Followed by some blue, red and yellow salt that i coloured myself by grinding up pastels;

Some images of the end product viewed from beneath;

And from the side;

Then I decided to head into my bathroom to see what I could write with/on. A bottle of spray-deodorant was the first thing that caught my eye. So with that I wrote on the mirror. However, it didn't really work out;

I then wrote with toothpaste;

Followed by toilet roll;

[this toilet roll was not wasted, I did fold it all back up] 

Finally, I filled my sink with water and decided to write with black Indian ink. Again, it didn't quite work out like I imagined but i liked the effects i got nevertheless. There's a great sense of movement within the ink. Although it doesn't recall the movement of my handwriting, it is the motion of my writing hand that generates the movement of ink in the water;

(Orange ink is then added)

The next thing i did was head down to the library to play around with the photocopier. I began to blow up my writing until it was huge and abstracted, so that the movement of the curves could be clearly seen;

I then photographed the curves on a zoom. I took these photographs at night time which interestingly lead to the photographs coming out in a variety of colours although the paper was white;

 
 

 

 

A small ensemble of the abstracted photographs in my studio; 

Putting Pen to Paper

I started off by writing one A4 page of mundane information in English, and one in Cyrillic (Russian). I chose to write in two different alphabets to observe and obtain a variety of movement and motion within my writing. And because I just love writing;