This piece arose from a reference photograph selected by Outside Authority. Their interpretation of the same elements (with reference to both Henry Moore and Matisse I think) is here and here.
I flooded my original doodle with water, ink, white acrylic paint and ground chalk pastel, heated it dry and then worked back into it with knife, ink and watercolour.
Realisation of Ipad sketch in ink and pastel, on balcony in shade, listening to Spotify classical guitar daily mix.
Should I:
This is how this picture now sits after working into the distant moor and cliff faces with sandpaper, knife, pumice, washes of sepia ink and a dusting of conte crayon. I have accentuated the highlights of the water and brought the tide further inland. The next challenge is the foreground which needs more respect. I like the textures that arose from the netting but want to wash over the white and bright green, and shape the near slopes more. I need to unite foreground and background into one image and that means, in part, stripping off the clean white sea I seem now to have painted. I have a photo showing grass heads – but how much now should I follow the photo?
Here is a gallery of images of this one scene on St Abbs Head in the Scottish coast, drawn originally in July 2013, some original field sketches and some in various stages of re-purposing.
I re-suspended the loose charcoal in the picture posted previously in very wet white gouache. White and Prussian blue acrylic were applied in selected areas. The white acrylic pushed the gouache wash away whereas the blue slowly bled into it. The migrating washes (below) were left to dry overnight and then the whole layer fixed (above).
The music was by Elena Kats-Chernin, the haunting Works for Piano Trio.
I am thinking how to draw back into this.
I drew this one evening using the music to drive the strokes of charcoal. I wet it and scraped back to the white highlights with a fragment of lava. While cropping the photo, I noticed the invert function that reversed black and white. The original is below.
Last week, I watched a stunning performance of the ballet “Bye” danced by Sylvie Guillem, set to this piece and choreographed by Mats Ek.
However, the image I have drawn owes more to a set of line drawings by the late painter Barbara Tate and to archival photographs of 1940s Soho. In her early 20s, Tate found employment as a maid, keeping house for a prolific and dramatic sex worker.
This large picture began as a layer of chalk pastel using a remembered images of a fallen tree as a source. I disintegrated that with charcoal, oil pastel and water. The skeletal remains of a long extinct mythical creature were overlaid in acrylic. And then I developed this further on the iPad as a steampunk cityscape, creating “The Ribs“.
Still, the real picture remained. I experimented with printing from paper covered with coloured oil pastel and overlaid with white acrylic, placed face down on my picture, and with heat applied. Initial tests suggested the acrylic would melt and carry the oil pastel onto the picture. It failed. The acrylic did not adhere and instead, the paint for the ribs was lifted off.
The next experiment was more successful. I took scraps of various papers, layered in oil pastel my desired colours and, on top, white oil pastel. Again, I used heat to print these onto my picture, creating the effect seen above. I worked into these with more layers of printing and then brought out contrasting tones with ink painted onto the resisting surface. I had to repaint the bones.
All in all, satisfying textures and strengths of colour on a dark background. There may be more to do on this.
The idea for this image clearly has its origins in China Mielville’s steampunk masterpiece, Perdido Street Station.
In my imagining, an urban density of neon-lit blocks and dwellings, surmounted by a tall temple’s spire, has risen beneath the gigantic fossilised skeleton of an ancient beast.
So this image does not truly depict Mielville’s vast diverse metropolis, New Crobuzon. where the Ribs jut over Bonetown, a makeshift market of temporary stalls, with scanty brick buildings and abandoned lots edging dirty scrubland. Tools break and cement remains fluid. A baleful influence from the gigantic half-exhumed bones limits development on the gravesite.
This piece started as an A1 size memory of the fallen tree in backlit woodland, drawn in chalk pastel, washed and blotted. Seeking to further disintegrate it, it was wetted and covered in inks and white gouache. Weeks later, I drew the Ribs into the dried-dark image in oil pastel and painted onto this resist with diluted white acrylic. This still exists in that form, awaiting further work. I took a digital image and explored future directions of travel on the iPad in ArtRage.
In the experimental drawing workshop, the instruction was “cover a big sheet with chalk pastel”.
Why?
To build layers, drawing, smearing, wetting, fixing, drawing again.
Others made patterns and abstracts. I still had in my head the image of the fallen tree set against the backlit foliage. I did not particularly wish to create a recognisable landscape piece but it was a start.
I reached a point where I wanted to disintegrate the picture I had started. I ran it under the tap, placed more paper on top and walked on it. Actually, the underlying image was rather resilient.
The print was interesting though.
At home, I rebuilt the picture from scratch, in just three colours, cobalt blue, rose and aurolean.
kestrelart 