Paula Rego. (2003) Come to Me [lithograph]
Paula Rego is an artist who has influenced my own work since I started university. I remember when I first saw her work, and being drawn into a world of haunting imagery. She uses the familiar – mothers and daughters, dolls and animals, and then reinterprets what is familiar to us all into something darker.
Paula Rego. (2003) Getting Ready for the Ball [lithograph]
I wanted to experiment with my ink drawings by adding colour. This work is purely about how colour would lay over black ink on a canvas. I looked at Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre illustrations by Paula Rego. She illuminates the work and conveys a mood by adding colour over her imagery. This is something I wanted to achieve with my ink drawings.
Preliminary ink drawing on canvas
Adding colour to the canvas
I have used coloured acrylic inks over my black drawing, which I’m very pleased with. Adding colour seems to make my drawings more unsettling. There is something strange about old photos which have had colour added. They look historical but could have been taken yesterday. It is this oddness I want to evoke in my own paintings. I shall now try colour on a mugshot drawing.
Sarah Bale. (2015) Poison Flower [acrylic inks on canvas]
