To see what was possible with cement on board I drew a small portrait from a source image I believe has some potential onto the cement covered mdf.
I marked out the areas I wished to cut away. Bad girl that I am I began to scratch out the cement from these areas with an etching needle before common sense and wrist ache caught up with me and I resorted to a Dremel with the appropriate attachment. The Dremel is my new best mate.
Having cut away the marked areas I then painted in the dark tones. At the end of this stage I had enough information to gauge whether these materials and this approach could be judged a success.
There were problems, the scale of the board, the scale of the drawing and the tone of the mdf compared with the tone of the cement.
The discrepancy between the tone of the mdf and the cement can be easily remedied by painting or staining the board before applying the cement.
The scale of the board did not allow the cement to tell its own story and show off its texture and drama. I wasn’t unhappy with this as again the remedy is straightforward, it simply has to be scaled up.
The problem with the small drawing was that when carving into the cement a reasonable level of detail was unachievable due to the coarseness of the cement and the image with potential became less subtle and a delicate expression was turned into a lack of expression. Again the solution was plain and I believe by scaling up the drawing along with scaling up the board will overpower the coarseness of the cement and a much higher level of detail, nuance and expression can be achieved.
I was encouraged with this experiment and am excited by the prospect of working with another new and significant medium.
