I don’t know the place that I live particularly well , I have however been fascinated with the constant change of my garden view, by month, by day, by hour, by minute.
South facing so during the course of the day tha shadows reverse completely. Surrounding hills cast shadows, causing different parts of the far landscape become illuminated. I’ve been a city dweller and it’s a complete treat to observe the changing seasons. I am changing season.
I’ve made a few disappointing forays into capturing the view as drawing practice and photographs. For this exercise I made an incredibly bad representation in watercolour. It did enable me to observe the horizontal layers and placement of oval shapes.
Collage – found paper textures.
I used Different papers that represented parts of the landscape, inside of envelopes for the sky (airmail?) – tenuous?) I used crumpled paper hills, newspaper for trees on the distant hills, crumpled and ripped water meadow as opposed to the flat lawn, squared paper block paving, pleated plants. I used translucent paper for the tree foliage to emulate the way you can see the landscape behind it, creased to represent branches.
Not a sophisticated collage, I like the sky and plants create a good sense of depth, the creased branches work well. Collage was a suitable technique to represent the range of textures in the landscape. I kept it simple as I didn’t want to make it too busy, it could work well in only textures of white paper, or using different fabrics and joining them in different ways (developing the outcome in ex 1.1) I enjoy the shadows cast by the creased plants , I’m not aware of too much 3D collage – this is something that I can research further.
Back drawing using inked plate and mixed mark making tools.
I enjoyed experiments with print on MMT. I tried a few monoprints before the above back drawing. The ink wasn’t lifting well off the metal plate and then I remembered the back drawing technique so reined and used my fingers and other implements to draw. This drawing is a little dark, there was shadow on the hilll tops but a much narrower and subtle band. The paving slabs form a great stage to observe the rest of the landscape. I find the tree and bush in the foreground quite effective, particularly the landscape showing through the tree foliage, the fence mid distance is too big and bold. In the accompanying ghost print I feel that the sky and hills are very atmospheric. There is a fabulous edge at the bottom of the lawn. Back drawing is a suitable technique for the landscape as it evokes atmosphere and adds textural interest to the main components of the drawing.
Bird paths – ink on drafting film.
This drawing excites me more than the others. Whilst drawing the landscape ,different birds visited the garden and flew overhead. It struck me that as a key part of the eco system they were sort of stitching the land together. For one of my final samples for MMT I carved a representation of a journey onto a plaster egg. I developed this theme for representing place by laying drawing film over the collage and mapped the path of birds coming and going. This drawing is quite messy to look at, however It is very energetic. I feel that there is a lot of scope for further exploration. I have jotted some ideas in my sketch book.
Building on this idea I set up a feeding station for the birds using paper and carbon paper – I had a fancy that they might make marks with their feet and beaks while eating, not successful on this occasion but I’m still intrigued by the process
I realise that I’ve used a portrait composition rather than a more obvious landscape, it’s the view framed by my doorway rather than the wide view from my garden. This was practical as I could work from life. I think it give my drawings a feeling of withdrawing, definitely an observer of the landscape rather than a participant in it. This is interesting because it is I realise an accurate impression of how I feel. Unintentional as I was trying to capture the beauty of the place.
I could have chosen a smaller place, the cocoon of my hammock, the space around my meditation chair but I felt that ‘place’ was big, I did the same with the personal experience task in ex1.2 taking a whole valley – this is an interesting observation, I may be missing opportunities by always looking at the macro rather than micro. This is something to consider moving forward through the course.