Room 1
I am lighting both my rooms using a LED wired to a battery. The light is turned on by pressing a switch down. I like the idea of the rooms being interactive. The viewer will look through the small round hole or holes (haven’t decided yet) and at the same time press the red switch to turn on the light. One LED lights the room perfectly. This single light makes some lovely shadows from the furniture.
A single LED wired to a battery
Press the red switch and we have light!
Looking through the round hole to see the lit room
I spent all Thursday altering my photos I took at Tranmer House. Not sure how many I made but I think I still have to make a few more to fill the Victorian photo album. On Friday I popped into uni to get the images I made printed. I’ve got to pick up my images on Monday but Glen our technician kindly printed me a strip of 4 photos so I could colour them at home with tea.
Test strip for colour testing
Tea staining the prints
Boy image scratched and tea stained
I thought staining my printed photos would be a simple task after my tea colour tests the other day, but it turns out this is not going to be as straight forward as I thought. I am really pleased with the look of my printed images but of course the paper is completely different to my original prints, so it absorbs the tea differently from my photos I tested last week. When I removed my images from the tea solution they looked a good colour – a pale sepia colour with darker areas where tea leaves laid on the images. The photo above hasn’t captured the colour but when they dried the colour is really strong, nothing like when I took them out of the tea solution. I’m going to have to make a weaker brew or paint the tea on to get a lighter tint!
For room 2, I decided to make an insect print for the wallpaper. Insects are used in forensics to determine the time of death and they can reveal to a forensic entomologist if the body has been moved. They are in tiny informers who help to solve crimes.
Fly wallpaper design, ink and watercolour on paper
I started my wallpaper design with a black ink base colour and let blue ink bleed into paper. The blue as with my other ink interior images is a link to BlueStar the chemical used to reveal blood stains which have been removed from surfaces and are invisible to the naked eye. I then added flies to the image. The plan was then to scan the drawing and put it into Photoshop to repeat the image to look like patterned wallpaper. However, I really am not happy with the whole image. It’s too busy and the flies don’t work on that background. Thinking about it I should have had a plain background, maybe a light wash of grey and then drawn the flies on. But it’s not working it so I’ve started again.
Sarah Bale (2016) Dolls head wallpaper design [digital imagery]
For my second attempt, I’ve used a found image of doll heads which I have distorted in Photoshop. I’ve then shrunk and repeated the heads to make the wallpaper for room 2. Like the wallpaper in room 1, I have printed each sheet using acetone. The thing with acetone printing is you don’t know what you will get when you pull back the printed sheet. Sometimes it can be an all-over black inky almost perfect print, and other times areas can be faded or not printed at all. But that faded strange imagery that is the produced is perfect for my rooms.
Printing the wallpaper
Here is the finished walls and floor for room 2. Now I have to make the furniture.
A tutorial with Robin led to the idea that I might include my photographs I took at Tranmer House in my degree show. I could display them in an old photograph album or perhaps a book.
A trip to a junk shop provided the perfect solution. I couldn’t believe my luck when I found a Victorian photo album which still had many of the photographs inside. I have decided to manipulate my original pictures and age them with tea and include them in the album with some of the original photos. The faces of the women in the album remind me of my mugshot portraits. They are strange lost souls frozen in time.
Sarah Bale (2016) Typewriter [digitally altered image]
Using Photoshop and iPhone apps I altered my original photograph of the typewriter which I took in Tranmer house. The Victorian portrait pictures in the album have a slight pink tinge, so I have tried to colour mine the same. I want the photos to have a strange eerie feel about them.
Sarah Bale (2016) Hanging Chairs [digitally altered imagery]
Ageing a test print of my photograph using coffee, tea bags and tea leaves.
Tea leaves, tea bags and coffee colour test
Here are the colour results! I prefer colouring from the tea leaves. With tea bags and coffee the colour was too intense, a little fake looking. I’m going with the tea leaves.
I went into uni today to work on a new ink drawing. The image I used for reference is a real crime photograph of a body which is falling onto the floor, all you can see is the shoes and the bottom of the trousers. I like the oddness of the photograph. It could almost be a picture after a party, where someone has had too much to drink and fell off their bed. I thought back to my mugshots and how quickly I worked. Some of those drawings were finished in 40 minutes. Working that fast made the made the portraits fluid, so I decided to work quickly today.
The finished ink drawing is just a little bit bigger than A4. I think I would have like the work to be looser but overall I’m pleased with it, and it works well with the other house interior drawings I have made.
There is something very creepy about stairs at night. The way they creek and the shadows the bannister makes on the walls. And what is inside the cupboard under the stairs? Why is the door half open?
Alfred Hitchcock taking the viewer for a tour around the Psycho house.
Staircase from The Babadook
I have been looking at the staircases in the films Psycho and The Babadook for image reference for my stairs. The work has taken longer than I wanted, especially as there is so little time left before the degree show, but it’s an important piece.
Here is the process of my stair ink drawings.
Sarah Bale (2016) Stairs [ink and charcoal on paper]
Here is another version of my ink drawing I made using Photoshop and iPhone apps.
Sarah Bale (2016) Stairs [digital layered imagery]
I just found this film made by Jennifer kent. Monster is a short film she made before going on to make The Babadook. It exactly captures the feeling I want to create with my ink drawings and rooms. Do have a watch but I must warn you it’s not for the faint hearted!
