doing and learning

the long-planned studio days finally arrived this week and the work began...

printing photos was the first order of the day, beginning with the ones I took of the remains of the Tutshi paddlewheeler

there is something about the graphic nature of these photos I find interesting,  all those lines going in every direction

 some drawing and stitching seemed like a good place to begin

I had a few papers that were painted with the ash ink I made a while back along with some acrylic ink - they reminded me a little of the blotch marks I saw in some areas on the hull of the boat

some simple stitched lines and knots

the backgrounds are a little busier than I would like, the contrast not as strong as perhaps it should be but that doesn't matter at all as these are just small trials that let me play with line

the one on the bottom right is my favourite and the one I'm going to work further 

the drawings fall into the category of "I'm glad I did them but..."

what they did tell me is that I'm not so interested in the lines and dots as I am in the weathering marks that were visible in some of the close-ups of the hull and the charred wood

some of them remind me of Asemic writing (which I'm investigating this week as part of an online course I enrolled in a few months back) whilst others make me think go EKG monitors etc

its taken me a while to sink back into my creative space, finding my way with the materials, figuring out what I want to do, and even more importantly, what I don't want to do

one thing I learned from this is that I'm less a fan of composition as I am of materials - I'm far more interested in the bubbly texture of the painted white metal portion of the hull than I am in the lines and rivets that cover it

I'm surprised at that as it was the lines that caught my attention in the first place but when it came to doing the samples I didn't bother with them much - I could try again and make them bolder, bump up the contrast, and go for something with stronger graphics but... the idea of doing that holds no interest for me whatsoever

 the textures I saw are a completely different matter though

and that has set me thinking...

and that is why I sample