My first impression after getting to know what Frottage it was like “you must be kidding!? :)”. Actually I used to draw patterns of coins with pencils using such a technique. The graphite pencil reveals the raised texture of coins on the paper. At that time, I did not know that this technique has a fancy name of “Frottage” 😊. In fact, most of the kids that I knew back then were kind of Frottage masters.
For this project, I started to frottage the collagraph matrices that I had already available. It was more of a trial and error to practice the technique and find new ideas through practical work.
“Rich Snake”
In this work, I decided to frottage coins as snake scales. In many mythologies, snakes are linked to fortune, power, or wealth. Almost every single fairy tale that I was told when I was a kid in which there was a treasure buried, always a snake was guarding it.
Coins have fascinating patterns and I think they are a great choice for frottage. I drew the snake and then I took advantage of my very own collection of coins that I collected from different countries that I have been to before to decorate the snake.
For colour choices, I thought coins are inspiring enough, so I used silver, bronze, and gold polychromos pencils. Actually I am quite happy with the outcome. It seems the snake has been fed with gold and silver which make its scales shiny and valuable.
As a final touch up, I completed my work by adding some ink and watercolour effects.
