After my previous experiments I had decided that I wanted to do phrases that were medium to long and had continuous line in between each word. I was pretty sure that I also wanted to use my dip pen in ink as well, but I wanted to try out all the mediums on top of an oil painting so that I could see how this surface might affect the medium, and also how the colour worked with a medium that was more opaque black versus one that was more grey.

I painted two A2 sized sheets with oil; one was random colours that can be found in many of the paintings of figures I have done, the other carried a slight resemblance to the female form, and also had many of the skin tones that I gravitated towards when painting the figures.

The phrase I wrote all over this painting was: “Six hundred and fifty million women alive today were child brides.” I used many different black mediums: acrylic paint, dip pen in ink, black ink pen, black felt tip, permanent marker, graphite stick, pencil, paintbrush in ink etc. When I was completing this piece I thought that I was going to choose the other way of writing the phrase; by putting a continuous line between each word.

However, after completing this piece with the same range of mediums, I realised that the other option looked far superior. This is because the writing is closer together and therefore appears to be more powerful and striking. I am looking to achieve a piece that is powerful rather than wistful, as this example appears with its curly lines. I also decided to change my mind about just using my dip pen in ink. I think that the range of mediums really complements the piece as writing with a pencil allows you to get thinner and smaller words than a paintbrush does, and so therefore there is variation in the weight of the marks and the size of the letters.