on a whim

some might think my fascination with the pilings along the Yukon River borders slightly on obsession

I suppose some might be right but...

 i won't be done with them until I am

and I'm not done yet

the image below, from December of '24 is my most favourite

spaced out, room to breathe

varying heights

beautiful texture and contrast... rough wood

light and dark grey

I could go on and on

late one night, reading a book about art and how inspiration can come at us, I saw a painting of the pilings...

floating in the distance of my thoughts I could see it clearly, as if it was hanging on the wall in the room

low drifts of yellow-tinged white, pale smudgy shadows here and there

the pilings, lightly textured, blocky... varying degrees of transparency, overlapping here and there

straight edges

the river, a slash of shining steel

the next morning on my worktable...

 a jar of mixed ink left over from the dip-dyeing escapade and a scrap of acrylic paper

some charcoal blocks nearby... on a whim, I picked up a brush

a bit of white on the bottom, a swish of pale blue near the top

holding my breath the whole time, not wanting to over-do 

the pilings were a different matter - with each flat spare stroke of the brush the urge to make them more realistic kept pushing through

I switched to charcoal, a tougher medium for me and did some with that - too dark, smudged them back, now too blurry - dratted soft edges!

back to the ink, then a dry brush

wipe it all off, try again

darker than I wanted and too many rough tops but the lack of detail made me smile

I left it for a few days 

the other day I decided to try practicing that slash of colour I was wanting for the river

I found a small stack of discarded paintings and drawings, flipped them over, grabbed a few different brushes and started 

bad, terrible, worse, wrong! yuck, sigh

on it went - different brushes made no difference... all I got were sold rectangles of grey-blue

found rougher paper, thickened the ink, dried my brush

tried again

better

yet thicker ink, an even drier brush and this time I used a low-quality rough, round brush, laid it flat on it's side and drew it quickly across the paper

got it!

a rough-textured uneven mark

before I could forget how I did it I grabbed the painting I had begun and did it again

straight across the whole of it, pilings and all

boom!

just as I had envisioned

well, not quite exactly... as I said, the pilings aren't quite as I had wanted - but now I've done this I can get them less representational, I just have to resist the urge to add detail

I need to keep Anita Lehmann's admonishment in mind - "only three more moves", when the main part of the work is done 

just three

as if the scruffy tops of the pilings wasn't enough I had to go and add the dark cracking snow shelf from the photo below

thinking somehow they needed it to anchor them 

I never thought to take a before and I can't say it looked better then than now but I wish I hadn't rushed to make it a picture

it wasn't meant to be a resolved work - just an example, another way of rendering them, one for the sketchbook

which it is, but one with a caveat

"stop before you think you're done"!

take care,

Jillayne