During the Easter holidays I was thinking of Tom Fruin and his lit up glass house. I have tested with some different materials and works from the past to see how they change when being lit up from behind with a lamp. The first was a small canvas with a rough drawing from years ago I had probably planned to paint. The canvas lit up well but I would have to consider a the spread of light as you can see where the lamp is placed behind.
On a larger canvas the light doesn't reach the edges and the wood in the middle which supports the size of the canvas can been seen in a shadow on the canvas.
Next was a canvas with ink and acrylic paint that had been mixed with liquid gloss, the image is lit up quite nicely with the line still being clear and I found it interesting that you could see the layers of drawing underneath the final image, but the watered down colour was made even weaker when diluted by the light.
When doing the same again to an acrylic painting on canvas the light doesn't come through as clearly but some does break through the paint. Like the ink drawing you can see the actually construction of the painting as the layers of paint allow different amounts of light through.
With the paintings that had been applied more thickly (with a palette knife) hardly any light is shown through, only the parts that had been scratched away, this could good if I want to paint on with one colour and then scratch away the paint to make my drawing.
Moving on from canvases I looked at a collograph print I made last year, because of the different layers that had been cut into the surface different amounts of light can be let through. Due to the French polish used to seal the card for printing the colour of the light that comes through had a warm orange glow to it, also were this particular plate had been used for a print there is plate ink on the top surface which doesn't allow any light through, so the clear black lines are made even more prominent with the light behind.
Relating more to Tom Fruins perspex, coloured house on to putting a lamp behind a glass frame. This glass frame is made from two thick pieces of glass that have magnets in each corner so they stay together without a frame, the good thing about this is that I can place things where I want them in the frame and they will stay in the same place when the frame is stood up or moved around. The first thing I tried was a piece of acetate with no marking, it can hardly be seen but it is visible which could be nice for some subtle effects.
Next I put some painted fabric between the glass, it flattens and straightens it out, letting a lot of light through but still showing some colour from the fabric. When an object was placed in the middle behind the fabric you could make it out quite clearly, so perhaps a stencil could be place in the middle.
I have a glass palette with lots of dried on acrylic paint. When this is lit up from behind, like in the paintings, the layers of paint are made more visible from the amount of light it lets through. I think that the colour and style of the left over paint is similar to Dale Chihuly's drawings but when thinking about the flatness of colour and avoiding distraction that Paul Caulfield chooses in his work I think this kind of detail could be a bit much in my current work. What I did take from this was the shadows that the pain splatters created, making silhouettes onto glass could be my answer to making portable stain glass drawings.
Thinking in turns of projection I took the acetate drawing that was used for my actual life sized projection of a study space in the studios at uni and place it between the glass frames. When projected the most successful drawing was the simple outline as the colour didn't transfer well, but when lit up I liked how bright the paint became. Thinking again in terms of flatness I think the best one was the solid filling of colour, however even though I like that you can see the brush strokes I think it would be best to keep things flatter at this point.
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