Austin Kleon wrote three wonderful books which I've each read several times, some long before I was comfortable calling myself an artist. In fact, his first book is the reason I made my first ever blog post on this website six years ago, when I was a game developer. I've decided to take the advice of his second book and share my processes, experiments, failures and accomplishments along the way, starting with this:

I would not have expected to fall in love with masking tape but here we are. This piece was an experiment for several things I wanted to play with: multiple layers of tape, gold paint, chaos, spray painting on small canvases, and making straight lines without drawing them first.

What worked:

The chaos came out exactly how I was hoping it would. I used some obscure caps and layered different strokes (if you can call it that without a brush) and kept on going until it looked…right? Can chaos look right? Apparently.

The composition is what I was going for too, an unnatural yet ordered grid imposed over a more natural, chaotic reality.

I was worried that the tape wouldn't stick to the canvas as well as it does to brick and metal, and the paint would get everywhere. I am head over heels for UNi-PRO blue masking tape now.

What didn’t work:

The straight lines are not straight. I learned that no matter how tight you hold it and precise it feels, you cannot rely on masking tape alone to make a straight line. It looks good enough in the above picture, but if I wanted to hang it at a 45 degree angle the bends would be much too pronounced for it to work.

The pink I used was a different brand to my old faithful Montana Black. I won't name it here, but the can became unreliable and lost all it's pressure while still half full. The result is a sloppy liquid in the bottom right corner that dropped its way under the tape, spoiling the black grid in places and making an inconsistent pink tone.

I don’t know exactly how I thought there'd be more gold when it was finished, but there wasn't. A slight incongruity between my mental picture and what I've produced isn't the end of the world, but the gold is definitely a little understated, compared to what I had in mind.

I intend to have another crack at this concept later. That's all for now!

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