Visual Thinking

Taking photographs is instinctive for me, drawing doesn't come so naturally.  But I find photographs can be too passive - it's easy to end up with masses of images and ideas about them that are too vague or simplistic.  I wanted to work with that last set of photographs and push my ideas further.  

In one of my books, the jeweller, Kayo Saito, describes her drawings as "image training".  I like that idea of drawing as a thinking process.  I'm not interested in copying my photos or producing an accurate landscape drawing.  What I want is to bring out the elements that interest me, play around with them and see what I can do with them.  

And so for the last week or so the studio has been turned over to drawing and collage.  I printed out my photos and cut them up.  Slicing them up, taking them out of context, the linear elements that had caught my eye when I took the photographs in the first place became even more shibori-like.  Arranging them into new compositions is similar to the way I would work with cloth, with lots of freedom to experiment with ways of juxtaposing the different lines and tones.  

For the drawing, I'm using mainly ink.   Ordinary fountain pen ink - although I'm using inks from Diamine who produce writing ink in 101 colours!  I love the way the ink flows and bleeds on the page in unpredictable ways.  Plus I can dilute it to make the palest washes or bleach it.  In other words it behaves a lot like dye.  

Hmmm.  There's something here about my taste for media that I can't fully control.  I think I rather like how they undermine my inner control freak and force me to let go of the outcome.  And I love the random, organic effects that ink or dye can produce.  

I'm not worrying about where all this is leading at the moment.  There's no plan.  But I'm enjoying this kind of thinking.  It's generating ideas about composition, marks, colour that are moving me beyond my initial response to the photographs - which is exactly what I want.  

clicking on the thumbnails will bring up a larger image

Wandering lines

I spent the weekend in Norfolk, where (as ever) I took hundreds of photographs.  Each visit, I usually find I'm drawn to a particular element, which can change from one visit to another.  Sometimes it has been trees, other times it has been edges - the point where one colour or surface transitions into another.  Often it is the lines.  

Walking across marshland to the beaches, following the creeks and channels that cut their way through the marsh, I was fascinated by the line drawn by the water through the mud of the creeks.  Twisting, meandering, serpentine, sinuous...  On a larger scale these are repeated by the course of the creeks themselves.  On the salt marsh, the edges of the channels are obscured by the vegetation, but the same turning line is there.  Then, on the fields, after the heavy rains we have been having, pools had formed - and I noticed the edges adopted the same curving form.  They looked exactly like the asymmetrically curving streams in Chinese painting.  

There are few straight lines here.  Although I did find some.  Scratches on the bottom of boat hulls.  Reeds breaking the horizontal surface of the water.  Cracks and fissures in the cliffs.  I photographed those too.  

This evening I picked several of the photographs and edited them to bring out their abstract linear qualities.  I faded the colour, blurred edges, lightened, darkened, until I had a whole series of monochrome, semi-abstract images.  I'm contemplating developing some of these further on paper.  … and I have lots of new ideas for effects I want to try with dye and resists.  

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

Standing at the edge of understanding

“The feelings you get, that thinning out that comes from going into limbo, out to the edge of your understanding and stand there reaching, reaching into a thin layer of unknowns, stuff to swim through without body or substance, without breath, without substantiation or reassurance, never knowing where it leads or what it’s made of, or what it’ll be like, and you float and struggle and gasp, it brings nausea and fear, strange body functions and doubt - much doubt - it’s like falling but never arriving anywhere, never hitting anything unless it’s a new concept, just the fear of falling - but from this leap comes real creation, for when it finally arrives, when it lands, when it is grasped, gasped, inhaled, coaxed into existence, it’s the craziest, most wonderful thing in the world. It’s better than anything else. It’s like falling in love not gradually but in a single moment. It is that moment of the realisation of love, not where it leads or how long it’ll last or what it means, just the heart-beating, stomach sinking, painfully-grabbing moment of Yes! This is it - then it’s gone and one lives with the taste of it having been. You always have some end result, but it always needs to be renewed, refreshed, never having the same original freshness of the first moment, the first kiss of creating.”

— Agnes Denes

More about Agnes Denes here

Music on. Stitching.

I am in stitch mode.  Listening to a mega playlist on repeat.  And reflecting on what I'm trying to do.  

I like the integrity of work where the stitches that hold it together are visible and part of the finished effect, but I also like my stitching to work with (not against) the dye marks on the cloth.  However I'm not an embroiderer - in the sense that my stitches aren't meant to dominate or be the design itself.  For me I think it's about adding another layer of marks. 

Visually, if there is no stitch, then the cloth and the dye marks have to do all the work.  They have to tell the whole story on their own.  If there is to be stitch, it has to add something to the story told by the cloth and the dye.  An additional element of mark, texture, line, that builds upon what is already there.  Maybe by emphasising or enhancing existing textures, marks (a harmonious strategy) or maybe by adding a contrast or counterpoint (a complementary strategy).  But unless the stitch is to become the dominant feature it has to integrate with what's already there, not take over.  

On the other hand, if the stitching is to be the dominant feature, then it pushes the cloth / dye marks into the background.  As though they become the background scenery rather than the tale itself.  In which case there needs to be enough stitching - or a strong enough contrast - for the story the stitch is telling to be read against the background.  

I finished one piece this week.   About to start another.  It may require a new playlist.   Meanwhile here are some close-ups of the stitching from two pieces.