Not to be Confused with Cheese

The other technique we learned at Creative Art Journal class this past week is called "frottage" - not to be confused with "fromage", the French word for cheese. :)

Frottage comes from rubbing a pencil over a piece of paper that is placed over a textured object. It is similar to brass rubbings, where people copy the patterns on commemorative brass plaques found in churches or at historial sites.

In our case, we used textured wallpaper, plastic netting from bags used to hold food products like onions or potatoes, scraps of burlap, etc. Here are two examples I made, one from the textured wallpaper pieces and one made by tracing various coins. The coins were hard to do, because they would sometimes move under the paper before I was finished tracing them. But it was interesting to see which parts of the coin stood out in the finished image, like the Queen's crown or the word "dollar".

I would like to try this technique again. Our teacher told us they let you do rubbings at the Royal Ontario Museum on some of the exhibits, that would be something I'd like to do.