Kill the Virus!

This afternoon I was finally able to try out a cool FB tutorial by one of my artist buddies, Ana Margarida! She is an art and language teacher from Portugal and runs the Butterfly School in Cambodia. This school helps out kids and young people to develop creativity with painting, sewing, music and dancing. It’s an honour to contribute sponsoring this school. And during this COVID-19 outbreak, we all need to stay home, To keep us motivated, Ana is giving out fun informal tutorials on Facebook for us to try at home and if we like post on the page.

Paint the Virus

One of Ana’s idea was to create prints using cling film. First we make a pattern on paper by thickly applying paint before carefully laying film on top and dispersing the paint around with a spatula Before the paint dries we then create imprints from them. I myself thought of starting with a rather vague painting of this evil Corona virus. And why you ask?

Kill the Virus!

When having to use clingfilm, the first thing I thought was “oh no, the painting will be ruined!” I didn’t want to paint something beautiful and destroy it. But this virus, I want to see it destroyed. The cling film is now my weapon with which I would then “kill” by catching it with the cling film, suffocating it and squishing it around. This evil is then disposed of. Sounds a bit graphic but the exercise felt quite symbolic and even therapeutic!

Create Beauty!

But how to prevent the virus from resurrecting? We can create something beautiful and happy! And recreate multiple times! Here, I firstly placed another paper on top and pressed with a brayer. And then created a ghost print. Then I took my used clingfilm and carefully placed it on top of a blank paper and pressed it on also with a brayer. And created a ghost print from that as well.

I’m looking forward to developing each of these paintings now! This afternoon, I just began working on my first one and can’t wait to complete and share. And of course, I am curious as to how the other prints will turn out. The challenge will be how to develop them further!