in the woods...

this weekend we camped at Wolf Creek

surrounded by the forest, the deep blue sky punctuated overhead by the towering pines, wildflowers dotting the open spaces of the forest floor

I had made a small sketchbook with heavy weight drawing paper and have been using it to record some things I have seen arriving last week

this weekend it was a few of those wildflowers mentioned above

my grandson was interested in what I was doing so to engage him further I showed him how to use the dandelions themselves to add the yellow flowers to a quick sketch of leaves and stems

from there, he brought me a horsetail fern and a sprig of something I could not name so he supplied his own:

"Grey's Water-bell"

and for the people from England who read this, a Yukon version of a "Bluebell Wood"

these tiny blue bell-shaped flowers' Latin name is:

Mertensia paniculata

also known as "Tall Lungwort", commonly called "Northern Bluebells"

the woods surrounding the creek are full of them, in every direction, but there was also Fireweed (which is just coming in to bloom), Wild Roses, Dandelions and Queen Anne's Lace

I stood and did the drawing on the left, later Grey brought me a small stem he had picked on his way back from the woodshed so I sketched that too

(the shadowed fern below it is the horsetail fern showing through from the other side)

it was lovely looking, seeing, sketching and sharing it all with a 5 year old 

a small part of a fun-filled weekend but one I'll remember for a long time

travelling

today I flew to the Yukon, travelling through the landscape from above

for the next five weeks I'll be travelling through it on the ground

last week I travelled through it in my mind...

twenty-five 1 1/4" squares with pen-marks and brush-strokes, soft subtle greys, dusky blues and greys and a few splashes of fireweed and wild rose pink

some were done hesitantly, a few marks, a long pause

thinking my way through several, a few coming far more easily

winter ice and snow has a lot of presence, as does water

it was interesting to notice the subjects I kept coming back to

it was also interesting to note the ones I added because I thought I should

I printed a copy of it and brought it with me thinking I may take a few and work on developing them further

or perhaps they will be the springboard to something else

either way, there is more of this kind of work in my future now that I'm back in the landscape that inspired it in the first place

"got to be starting something"

like the song, I started out with 

"wanna be starting something"

and eventually the "wanna" became "got to" and things finally start to happen

this time it's to do with a long-held desire to experiment with various print-making techniques and over time I've enrolled in a few courses that focus on some aspect or another, bought a few supplies and tried one or two things

this last week I've begun again, working through one of them by Anita Lehmann (same instructor as the Landscapes course I've been posting about recently) though with an upcoming trip to the Yukon I won't be getting very far until my return in August

nevertheless, a start was made

beginning with mono printing, working in the subtractive, where the plate is fully inked and then ink removed using a tool or tools of some sort to create the desired image

for the first session I used the edge of the brayer

it took a while to get the evenness of the ink layer sorted out, longer still to get the dampness of the paper at the right level but after a few unsuccessful attempts I finally pulled a few prints I was pretty delighted with

the first image shown is of the plate, inked up with the marks made

rolling the brayer up the the plate, switching the angle, curving this way and that, I seem to have created a tangle of growth - no plant in particular, just playing with the edges, angles, speed and curves

 next is the resulting print

I love the texture and line of the stems, the way the leaves curl and bend

there's nothing at all contrived about it, nothing was planned - I just made a mark, liked it and did more

this way and that, until it felt like enough

so I tried again, this time printing on a lightweight Awagami paper in pale green

this version seems even more of a tangle and I like the effect of the green

for first efforts I'm pleased and will continue with the subtractive process for a bit and then move to additive, making marks on a clean plate

I may even begin with the same motions as I used here, just to have a comparison

it feels good to have finally got beyond the gate

studio trials

a few different trials over the past couple of weeks

bite-size things that can be done in the between times of yard and house work

first was layers of ice in tinted charcoal with a flat brush

not a planned study, more a way of using up leftover paint on the palette, but I do like it... it's another forward movement in my effort to get interesting ice

after that I used a darker grey to try for a rock wall/fence

I think I need to do a whole page or two of these sorts of trials, to explore the marks further, and really set the motion of making them into my hands

in addition to that I finally tried doing some image transfer on to linen cloth using black & white laser prints of photos taken up north last year

the first is ice on the Yukon River using clear gesso for the transfer medium

it worked quite well though I may have been a bit heavy-handed when rubbing off the paper

as well, the clear gesso I used isn't exactly clear, more of a pale amber and it has lent that slight tint to the transfer

it gives a slight effect similar to that of sepia-toned photographs

the second try was with an image of the clay cliffs that line the river through much of Whitehorse

this time I used Liquitex Matte Medium  - this worked especially well, the transfer is clear and sharp, very little detail was lost and the fabric has kept much of it's drape, still feeling soft and flexible in the hand

it's good to do things like this, experimenting and focusing on simple things

it may not seem like much but there's good learning here that I'll be using in the days and weeks ahead as I continue working with the winter river

never mind that it's just great fun!

it's only paper...

another wet and gloomy week, lots of inside time

I'm continuing with the landscape work, this time working with space, line, colour and finally "motive"

motive is where you take what you learned from your explorations of all the other design elements and do a more resolved drawing

I have done at least eight motive drawings, probably nine

several were ripped up and tossed right on completion but I kept going and each day I said I was done, would live with what I had but then the next morning I would decide to try "just one more" 

always thinking about how to stop over-thinking it

and in that, it's no bloody wonder I've been struggling - always the thinking

anyway, here are a few that didn't end up in the bin - each has an area I really like but try as I might I couldn't bring it all together in one

below is one of the early versions: the two farthest mountain shapes are ok and I like the stone fence well enough but the in-between parts are awful

this next one - the sky, and farthest three mountain shapes are good but the three foreground shapes are not

in this next one, I was ok with everything but the last three shapes, the sky and two lighter mountains

the one I did after that had a pretty decent first three shapes - stone fence, meadow and first hillsides of trees but the rest was really bad so I tore off the parts I didn't like and then laid that foreground on the drawings where I liked what was happening in the background

below it is laid on what is the first image in this post

next I laid it on the second version

I liked that the best and so glued them together, happy that I was done

this morning I decided I needed one last try

I did two - the first was torn up pretty quickly

the second is not bad - the stone fence is getting closer to what I was wanting, though it is rather cubist... 

 I was using tinted charcoal pans and that isn't an easy medium to work with... still, it shows progress

The trees are not at all abstract but at this point I don't care - the pieced version takes care of that 

having done this over and over again I have realized that I am not yet close to working in abstract but I am feeling like there are glimmers of expression in these, not overall, but certainly in areas

there are places where I wasn't hung up on trying to make it look like what it is but I did come to realise the fence and the trees were the areas that I kept automatically moving to realism, or at least, strongly representational

Anita stresses in the course not to think of things as what they are - not a fence, just a shape with a certain kind of texture

the best part was that after drawing the pencil lines for the landscape shapes over and over again, by the time I got to the motive drawings I didn't need to look at my reference photo at all and as I got to about the 3rd or 4th of the final versions I wasn't looking at the photo at all

 and that was a breakthrough all by itself