Scraped engines

Scraped engines

I was inspired by the recent exhibition at GOMA, The Motorcycle: Design, Art, Desire for this activity. Previously I thought engines were dirty, greasy, rusty things, but these ones on display were very glamorous! It got me thinking about the fascinating array of forms within engines, the swirling pipes, bumpy radiators, and knobbly bolts. The below activity gives you a chance to design your own engine with the most basic of art materials. 

You will need some black card, some rigid cardboard, scissors, and grey paint. 

First, look at some pictures of engines on the internet for inspiration.

Make your scrapers, a range of sizes will be useful, and try cutting some with ridged or bumpy edges. 

Dip the edge of your larger scraper in the paint, don’t scoop lots of paint though. Dragging the scraper across the page slowly, make your largest shapes first, a big tank or a swirling exhaust. Moving your hand in different directions will create different forms. Gradually fill in some gaps with smaller and more intricate designs. Try to limit yourself to an overall shape for your engine instead of just filling the whole page. 

You can scrape another colour on top of this once it is dry for more complexity, or try getting a dark felt tip marker onto your dry painting and adding those really fine details. Or work with a fine paint brush and add in black/ white/ silver detail. But I do love the simplicity of the grey on black. 

We have another scrape paint idea too – have you seen this one?? Scraped sea-scapes. 

The things you can do with a small piece of box card hey??

Happy creating folks!

Until next week!

Tracy x