TEA, INK, RUST AND PAINT

After tea-dyeing some fabric, I had a lot of the tea left over, so I decided to dye some more paper. I’ve got a box full of old printer paper pieces which I originally intended to shred, as they are old bank statements and other sensitive information. Then I thought that I could add media to them to cover the personal details, and utilise them in my art.

I didn’t photograph each stage of this process, which was as follows:

1. Tea-dye the papers.
2. Spatter and splodge and spray inks while the tea was still wet.
3. Dry everything.
4. Spatter and splodge on rust water.
5. Dry again.
6. Cover any sensitive information with acrylic paint stencilling.
7. Finally, spatter with white and black Indian ink.

Here are the competed papers.

The text gives an added dimension to the papers. In some cases I scribbled some asemic writing over the personal details with a permanent grey archival pen but most of this got covered up.

As anticipated, the rust water reacted with the tea and mostly turned quite dark – grey to almost black.

Where the wet media moved and blended, some really beautiful patterns emerged.

Here are some detail shots.

Finally, the complete collection.

These papers will serve as useful masterboards – only A4 size but I shall still be able to get quite a few pieces out of each one. The paper is mostly only 80 gsm so I after cutting them up, I shall back them with scrap card to make them a bit more robust.

A handy way to decide which bits to select for cutting, is to make some small paper view-finders and move them around the sheets until you find a pattern you like. Alternatively, to avoid any overthinking, and plunging in and taking a risk, cut them up from the back! Life is full of surprises… Whatever happens, these grungey papers will make useful backgrounds, collage fodder, bits for clusters and tags, and so on. Nice to know they’ve been rescued from the recycling bin.

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