I made the most of an unusually warm day this week to explore the local nature reserve when I had finished up work and had a couple of hours before the school run. I took my sketchbook and tiny watercolour kit, snowdrops were flowering and the light filtering through the trees cast a lovely light -dashes of brilliant green among the purple trees. I found a handy fallen tree trunk to sit on and did a really quick watercolour sketch to capture the colours, without thinking too much about the forms, and then a more detailed and more close up sketch of the central older tree flanked by saplings.
It was still cold and I was fighting off a bug (it got me since) so I didn't want to stay too still for long and get chilly, and capturing the form afterwards would allow the watercolour time to dry. So that was the reason for splitting the colour and form over 2 pieces. At least that was the excuse at the time, but now I am thinking more about that decision as it has sparked off a new thread. Now, I have to be careful of giving new ideas time because I am plagued by them. I am too easily distracted from finishing a nearly done piece by a new and interesting idea. I am not surrounded by finished works, more like piles and piles of sketches and experiments. I have been on the search for a long time for a working method that will allow me to both experiment and produce works that I can perceive as finished, if not actually final: pieces that contain the same spontaneity as the original sketches.
This instance, however, is interesting because it's the first time ever that I have gone back to use sketches as reference material in order to produce other work that seems as fresh and spontaneous as the first does. Spontaneity of line and colour is always what I feel is missing in the works that I abandon. I want to capture that feeling of being in the moment of perception. The light, and sense of imminent movement; that it's all going to change again. I think it's a sense of the UK's ever changing weather and light - if that doesn't sound too highfalutin. It seems silly that I've made this huge discovery now - I do know of the process artists use of making sketches, bringing them back to the studio and working on them further. Other artists on my Fine Art degree course did exactly that, and it seems strange for me to admit that I didn't, but the process didn't make sense to me; I seemed to get more than enough grist out of the ideas teeming in my head and I wondered why friends would seem to struggle for inspiration. I honestly look back and think it was a case of me being unable to see the wood for the trees. I didn't feel I needed a similar process, then, but I am beginning to see the value in it now. This maybe a case of maturity. :-)
So it's maybe a case of collecting material, sort of clues, that remain unfinished enough for me to pick up the threads of inspiration from them again at a later time.
I have spent the last 6 months experimenting with acrylics and gesso on canvas, trying to get used to a thick medium and fabric, after being used to watercolour and paper for so long, and along the way I discovered acrylic ink and india ink, again. Now I'm back to using watery mediums again and it does feel a little like I've come full circle.
Anyway, so getting thoughts down does help, at least a little bit. So these are the original sketches I made.
And these are the 6 quick sketches I did from them. I don't know how long they took, but they were fast. They are water colour and acrylic ink - Payne's Grey which is a little watered down and I've used a wooden stick to make the marks with. I do love the way the ink fragments into the colour. It is very difficult to control the effect, but I like that. The challenge is, I think, to scale up, as these are small, about 12cm x 20cm.
These are my favourites of the 6. I have to maybe think up some words to go with them. I love the combination of ultramarine, alizarin crimson and the ink.
I was inspired to scale up, but I went too large and there was not enough paint. I ended up flipping it on its side, smearing some gesso on and drawing some bird shapes. It's unfinished and will probably remain so in this format. I think there may possibly be a way forward in cutting up into smaller drawings and working further on those. But, back to family and paying work while I mull it over. I am usually reluctant to publish ones I'm not happy with but this is part of the 'process' that I'm experimenting with and doing this may help me stay on track.
Thank you for reading this far and please do leave comments.
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