22nd November 2023

I noticed that the plaster had lifted off the wood in places, so I needed to find a way to purchase the plaster to the clay if at all possible. Its not a very environmentally friendly way of doing things as I used PVA only on one piece of wood, PVA and screws slightly raised in another piece of wood, and PVA smaller pieces of wood on the third. Also I was interested to see if the oxidisation effect of the rust coming up through the plaster would work with other materials so I used yellow ochre, iron oxide pigment and zinc filings.

In my head, although I am being very structured, it all feels a little bitty and messy. Whilst waiting for the plaster to go off, I carried on with my idea of image transfer. Using mod podge I had a bit of plaster I didn’t paint so used that to practice the image transfer and also a piece of cotton rag handmade paper, just to see how it would work. I have done image transfer before onto MDF using emulsion so this was a familiar process to me.

I then gradually dampened the top image and started to remove the backing from the paper. It worked reasonably well. I didn’t get brilliant results on the paper, but it worked well with the plaster. Had a ghostly effect.

I had covered the slab of clay in white slip and found some black and white images. They have to be definite black and white images. My image of the train needed to be turned into a negative which I did using adobe software. Its the white areas that the stains adhere to. The image of bits and pieces I found in the recycled paper bin, so for the purpose of experimenting it is what I need.