It's fun to experiment with the effects of heat from my butane torch on art materials. I can imagine all sorts of abstract applications for these materials.
Red foil - scorches to black, then silver, then melts
Green foil - scorches to turquoise and blue, then gold, then brown, then melts
Gold foil - scorches to amber, brown, black
Note the cool bubble pattern. All the foils bubbled.
Blue foil scorches to green and gold.
This is a different gold foil - scorches to lighter gold, then silver, then black before melting.
In addition to the foils, I tried torching some other collage materials.
Thin plexiglass - very cool melting pattern
Silver foil on left
Piece of copper in the middle- copper changed color to a darker, duller version of the original piece
Strip of silver metal flashing (aluminum?) - This silver metal turned gorgeous shades of gold, amber, and brown tones and remained shiny. Where I held it to the flame longer, it turned dull charcoal gray.
Top - a leaf shape cut out of gold aluminum. The right side of the leaf is torched.
Bottom - purple metal turned gold to silver to melting.
Burlap - no surprise here. I liked the blackened look.
140 lb painted wc paper - Being paper, I was able to burn a hole in it. Nice singed effects around the hole. If you want to collage on some paper with a really unusual edge, this would work well I think.
This is all I've torched so far. I did them outside with a bowl of water on hand for dousing the flames. I'm sure you will be seeing materials prepared this way in my future abstract work.
