Here is the freshly made picture of my text on Sophie Herxheimer’s pen drawing, with some of the process and materials I used in view. It reeks of perfume. It came out of an exercise via Chris McCabe’s Collaborations session yesterday.

My first instinct in class was to draw on it with makeup, even before the sentence was chosen. In the end, it made sense to as well. I stupidly didn’t take a “before” picture but Sophie drew in black ink and I used watercolour, eyeliner, nail varnish, pencil, marker, essential oils and perfume.

My three types of sentences were:

1. Declamatory – He’s bleeding!

2. Phrases in response to the drawing – “I didn’t know what a ham looked like,” and “Giant Animal meat”.

3. Chosen by random out of a book – “the woman gone, her Chanel scent”

The class responded to the third. It was noted that no one ever responded favourably to the direct response to the image, and Chris had us consider that literal or direct responses did not usually work as well.