I chose an 18 x 24 inch watercolour paper for this exercise, as A2 format isn’t available here… the sheet should be roughly the same size, maybe a little larger. For papers, I used a scrap bag of coloured Mulberry paper in all different colours. I sorted them by colour and then selected some green tones, blue tones, grey tones for muted colours and yellow, red and orange for some bright accents. I tore them apart into small pieces which gave a nice effect at the torn edges because that paper contains lots of longer fibers. I also prepared short bits of paper band and some brown craft paper for different shapes and textures.

I let these fall over the paper sheet on the floor colour by colour and obtained a nice and very arbitrary pattern. The trouble began when I tried to glue the pieces. I had layers of bits and wanted to glue them in the order they had fallen on the sheet, but this meant glueing those at the bottom first and so I had to lift up those on top – which swirled the entire heap and I lost the original patterns. Then the pva glue was a nightmare because it soaked through the paper bits onto my hands and made them so sticky that I hardly could fiddle the paper bits off to get them back onto the sheet. But after two hours or so, I had finally glued my composition on the sheet and found it looked quite interesting.

Maybe it would have been better to glue one colour before getting to the next, but I guess then I’d have lost a bit of the random character in the colours. But for practical reasons, I might do that if I repeat the exercise.

Assessing the pictorial qualities of the random composition

Are there colour combinations or juxtapositions that especially appeal to you?

I like the red and yellow-orange bits because they stand out as accents against the more muted colours, just as I intended them to be. I also like the pieces of paper band because of their different shapes which adds interest. Then there’s a degree of transparency where pieces are glued in layers which I think should correspond nicely to the transparency of watercolours.

The feathery torn edges versus cut edges and the fibers in the coloured papers add a nice textural element.

Are there areas of tonal contrast that are interesting?

The dark blue papers in the center create strong tonal contrasts with their adjacent bits, but also the red bits stand out quite dark against their respective backgrounds.

Are there elements of patterns emerging?

Yes, I think the composition has a center weight in the middle area of the sheet and from there it seems to explode to the outer edges. It looks quite energetic. But I think I will not work with this too straightforward, rather “slow down” a bit for a less violent overall effect.

Can you read in possible figurative elements?

Maybe a bird or a dancer.

Can you link up separate areas to make a more satisfying composition?

I think the current random composition is dense enough to permit multiple linkages of areas. The challenge will be to establish some of these to achieve an overall interesting result.

Completing the painting

I started with a light yellow watercolour wash for the upper area because I thougth this colour would match nicely with the colours of the glued paper bits there. As I moved downwards on the right side, I mixed in some red to work towards orange and red for the lower area. This was supposed to take up the orange coloured piece on the bottom and create a colour contrast to the blue papers of that area.

I began realizing that my washes could respond to the colours of my glued papers in different ways, and I tried a dark blue next to the center blue papers and from there added yellow to get into green which corresponded to the green papers to the middle left. From there, I added more yellow and thus met the starting colour in the upper middle area.

After a break I began with black ink for wiggly lines emanating from the tighter ends of the light green paper strips. I tried to maintain an intuitive working style with micro-movements and meandering pathways for the lines.

Again I needed a break where I just looked at the painting and let myself be inspired for the next media to add. I thought that my coloured accents needed some more weight and began working with oil pastel. Rather intuitively I began making wiggly marks that took up the fiber textures and extended over the boundaries of the coloured papers like tentacles. I wanted to intensify the colour effects and therefore tried to match the colour of the papers, plus adding a tonal variation, for example yellow and orange on a yellow paper.

At this point, the painting began to look quite scary to me. I had associations of fibrous growth and something very unhealthy. I was fascinated and repelled at the same time, but felt that I was doing the right thing because I responded to my own composition so far. I think it was the fibers of the mulberry paper that inspired me to do the wiggly ink lines and oil pastel marks. When I realized this, I was ready to take it a little further and worked out the oil pastel marks over most of the paper bits. Then I used ink to add even more wiggly lines to support and emphasize the oil pastel marks.

In another pause where I assessed the painting so far, I found there were too many “empty spaces” between the papers with their wiggly extensions, and I remembered I technique I had seen a while ago in paintings by watercolorist Sherly trevena. She uses watercolour pencils to scrape off some pigment over a wet area, which creates interesting speckles. I thought this would be the right thing for my painting and went ahead. Now my wiggly paper bits really came alive and they looked like little water creatures emanating particles while flowing through their space.

Taking another break, I thought that the painting was quite done, but somehow not yet finished, and I wasn’t sure what exactly was missing. I let the painting sit for an hour or so, them came back for the final assessment. Looking at it from a distance, my eyes wandered along the cut edges of the papers, and I found they would benefit from being brought out a little stronger. I really hesitated but then went ahead with more black ink and a piece of watercolour paper that I used as a ruler for straight lines. I emphasized some of the paper edges and found this added depth and a sense of purpose to the cut edges. It was very difficult to decide which edges to emphasize and how long to draw the lines. Not all my decisions were right but I think overall the lines were a good thing to add, because they provided additional structure and from this point on, my eyes had a sense of orientation when wandering over the picture surface. The lines seemed to support a visual exploration process for all the little things that happen in the different areas.

There was a moment rather at the beginning where I hesitated if I should take up the idea of a bird and connect my elements to form a bird-like shape. But I decided against that because I found it too literal and did not want to become concerned with resemblance. I think this was the right decision because it meant that the entire process stayed more open and experimental.

I think the final painting is quite successful and starting from my initial perception of something like an explosion, I think I have developed it into an “organic explosion”, something like a floating growth process. So in a way, I’ve accomplished the goal of creating something less violent than a typical explosion.

Working in such an abstract way was really interesting. There were moments where I found the painting ugly and asked myself why I never seemed to be able to create something “pleasant for the eye”. But I said to myself that this was about discovery and it was not important how pretty the outcome would be. I think by letting myself be guided by some intuitive notion of what the painting needed, there was a nice turnaround. It probably had to do with a change in approach from trying to conceal ugly parts to going forward and emphasize what I found in front of me. This somehow turned the ugly parts into something visually interesting and important for the entire composition.