Ways of seeing

Rorschach a Swiss psychiatrist invented the ink blot test.

Our chairman Ken Lilley led the evening’s activity, he introduced club members to Rorschach psychological test as a means to create art. The inkblot is where your mind starts to see recognisable patterns from ambiguous forms created on paper.

Andy Warhol Rorschach 1984; invented his own inkblot to create art.

Materials: Paper (watercolour works best), acrylic inks, or water colour paint, coloured pens or pencils.

The technique

1. Fold your paper in half.
2. On one side of the paper place random ink blots.
3. Fold your paper and gently rub over the paper with the flat of your hand.
4. Open up the paper, and interpret what you see. Use your pens or pencils to change it to whatever you see.

Further reading

A detailed article, ‘The deliberate accident in art,’ by Christopher Turner, published 1/10/2011 can be found on the Tate website.

Check out our members work!

Creating a Composite Picture

The finished masterpiece

Our members brought along their paints to our September meeting to paint a composite picture based on a painting by Cesare Vecellio. The evening was led by David Coleman, who had divided a large photo of Cesare’s famous painting “Portrait of a Large Family” into postcard sized pieces.

Our task was to reproduce one of these pieces using our preferred medium on an A4 sized piece of paper or card, and to complete the work in less than two hours. This was quite a task and meant that we had to work quickly with a relatively dark source photo.

Working furiously with our paint brushes and making cheerful banter, most of us managed to complete the task (somewhat) and at the end we assembled each painting in a grid and compared it with the grand master’s original. If Cesare were alive today, I’m sure he would have howled with laughter at our meagre attempts at realism art!

Sections of the original

We were four participating artists short of completing the work, but four intrepid volunteers came forward to complete the missing parts at home in their leisure.

Hopefully our handiwork when finished, will be assembled and be on display at our forthcoming exhibition later this month.

Left: Alan Walker well into his piece

Ken Lilley gets to grips with his part

Leslie Burrows flying along