Eggs

These are some photos that I took in the last few weeks and I know that there are pictures are waiting to come out. This is one of Box Hill and although, I have a landscape photo in roughly the same area. A portrait format seems right, but I can see how the elements are split up with sky, hill, then the tree branches in a circular spin and finally we have a light element with a deeper green shadow stretching out from the foreground.


Marlow church, which I had been asked about doing a picture for some one. However, I did not have the time to do one of my rotring pens and I felt that I need to some prep work with a sketch. The bridge across the Thames is a suspension design, very much like the Brunel one in Bristol that I would cycle across. I can see how the church will make a good image to draw and will be a 'realistic' picture. So this image (below) is intriguing for the layout with the reflecting image on the water and as a future reference.


Below is the photo of Box Hill, this was the starting point of the sketch and then the digital art work that became the first piece for Surrey Dreamtime. I did truncate the landscape to include more of the left hand side of the image.

Over the Top

This is the latest piece of the Surrey Dreamtime Box Hill (1.3), which I had printed out for some one. I think I learn a lot in producing this art work on the Mac. The layering needs to better controlled as I found that I was mixing different colours on differing layers; probably need to focus as if I was doing a woodcut print.

The size of the above image does not do justice to the marks. Putting the red layer as a background colour has definitely helped me break into another world. I keep on wondering if I need to push it further, but have decided to leave it for the moment as I have other projects to concentrate on.

Looking Down the Hill

I have been working on my digital artwork, using the paint software program to create the piece. The original sketch book was in the house and I opened it up to have a look. Comparing and contrast. I found myself greatly stunned by the differences between the two.

If I had done what I consider a standard picture, it would have a stronger structure, usually overloaded with black. So this first attempt with paint software has been a revelation and a big leap into the unknown. When I look a bit harder, I can see bits from the original sketch, yet it does not look like any picture that I would produce.

Divine Sparks

In the depths of a cupboard were some old photographs of family from a range of years, but tucked in away in an envelope of photos were these two pictures. The first is from a summer house at Wrest Park and the other is a tree from behind this house.

I have been casting my mind for some time, it must said, for a picture for the local vineyard, open art exhibition called Bacchus and has a theme, that is open to board interpretation. The next one next year in early January 2010 is titled, ' Awakening'. I have let this roll round in my mind for some time and tried to bring it forward to think what I could do. Having missed the last few exhibitions, for a lack of an idea or time. The dreaded 'T' word again. I am making a purposeful resolution to try and do some thing. So finding these two photos was a great boon.

The theme that has been waiting is something with seeds, but my first picture, I presented was a deep shadow tree called Circling the Year.


The idea was on a connection between the shadow roots and the tree as itself with the idea of a circular movement as the colour changes throughout the year. Lots of white to give a sharper edge to the roots and knocking back the high horizontal to go into the background. The image is big and so is the frame. a good 720 x 1020mm plus size. I had used a previous frame and the person framing the piece tutted as he felt it was not big enough. In the guideline for the exhibition the frame can not be bigger than 800 x 800mm. So I will reduce the size to something more manageable as well as cut down the cost.

The seed idea has been germinating and I had thought of using my book of days piece and use one of the massive (and I do mean massive) pine cones to have that centred in the 'lost' book, but it did not work or I was not happy with it. It did not look right and I played around with several pine cones and one stone. I might show these photos later or just leave them somewhere 'deep' as the photos above were to reappear fortunatiously.

The framing device of the 'lost' book, I feel is replicated in the open door of the first picture. It show a certain 'deep' depth to the image as you gaze is cast back to the stone ornament and then on to the house via long lake. It reminds me slightly with the layout of the magnificent Castle Howard in Yorkshire by Vanburgh. It was used for the setting of the TV series of Brideshead Revisited, but the place is truly fantastic. The landscape is semi-formal with obelisks, a mausoleum, odd ornaments laid out in a grand design. If you have never been, it is a place that must be on your itinerary at some point in your life.

The tree, I like has it has a 'flat aspect', the horizontal canal with reflection, the almost circular round branches sprouting from a layer of green, then we have more horizontals and finally the whiteness of a 'dead' branch, almost lightning like falling from the heavens.

How can I combine the imagine into a single piece?

Learning Lessons

I have finally managed to re-work by artwork for the exhibition A Book About Death. I arranged for it to be printed in the States and then shipped to New York via Web-to-print. My first experience of attempting, so lets hope it is not famous last words and I am late, but at the moment finding a job is more important in my life.

I found that I had to revise the size and originally I had intended to do 4.25 x 6" postcard as this was close to a A6 size, but I had to download a template in PDF format. Export my InDesign as a PDF and then insert into the PDF file. I always found it difficult to follow the help in the software, so took my friend's advice and 'google' for the answer. This worked and I was able to re-work the image.

Unfortunately, I had to change it several times as the file was not quite right for either web for print site. So some of the learning I have done at College, I was able to use and look to develop this further. So I learnt a lot and now need to speed up on my processing of artwork for print.

It was reported recently that to become an expert requires 10,000 hours. So it is a small step, but I do have a bit of a start being involved in the graphic and printing industry, even if it is on the admin side. Even though you become an expert, you still must keep on learning, although I am wondering how I could have speed up my current learning process up.

Now to do my website.

Soon.

At last!

This blog was titled after the idea of two split ideas 'mashed' (if that is now a technical term) together to create some thing else. This is my first attempt to use a paint software programme that I was given with my pen and tablet. One of my desires to use a pen rather than a mouse as it would give me a better control over the mark-making.

So the image above marks the beginning of trying the theory out. I found that I had to lay a ground and decided on a reddy-brown and then add green on top to signify the woods. Trying to keep the colour simple and not too sophiscated. I found that the pen on the tablet did give me pressure control. As I originally intended to keep a certain consistency of dots, but finding that the dots could change with pressure. It gradually changed to a wide selection of marks.

It is a gradually changing my mind how to use this new process. I like the idea of being able to use a short cut to put down a lot of consistent colour as it in the background and using a single pen to replicate a range of differing media.

Memories of the Past

I have been fascinated with legends and mythology since my childhood. This article comments that folklore is a lot older than we would think. I remember my father telling me the legend of Troy and how the German, Schliemann went and excavated the city (or several cities).

Our paper ran a series of comic strips, one was a factual one and there was one about the legend of Atlantis. It might have been at the time, when the BBC Chronicle TV programme was investigating various period of history, Silbury Hill and Stonehenge featured, so it might have been one of these programmes and looking at the theory that Thera in the Aegean was the original basis of the legends.

However, the flood myth seems an universal myth with every culture having a variant on the legend. Climate change has played apart over the period and this might be the reason for this universal appeal. This BBC radio programme considers how the landscape around the British Islands changed over the period and these survivors carried tales of the flooding down in their stories. The commentator recalls how a trawler first brought up some remains that humans had lived in this part of the world, before it became a sea.

I had always thought of the stone ages as a 'boring' period of history, but several articles over time have changed my mind. The recent series by Michelle Paver called The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness is a very good read and has some excellent comments. Also there have been odd finds that have appeared, The Bronze Disk of Sanger and this has led to some wild theories about the past. The idea that there is a starting point for civilization is a fascinating one as researchers try and discovered the truth about the past.

I wonder what stories the future will tell of this age?

Cookham - Stanley Spencer's country

The Village of Cookham is by the river Thames and was home to another great eccentric artist, Sir Stanley Spencer. The place is a typical village, not quite is aseptic, but it has the quaint old collages and the stone towered church at it's heart. Further on is the a long meadow common now owned by the National Trust.

Spencer's work is both figurative, but not full on realism. It is a personal iconography linked to biblical imagery and his own village world. A lost world of between the wars, even after World War 2, one thinks of those very British period TV shows of Poirot and Marple. The paintings harks back to a 'golden' era.

I believe that Spencer is in a long line of 'eccentric' British artist who are not define by an 'ism'. William Blake is a fore-runner of Spencer with his linking of the real world with the world of the ethereal. Francis Bacon was an usual individual and his work, did not lead to a 'genre'. In some ways, Graham Sutherland's work were adrift from the mainstream. Although, Sutherland has been credited with the forming what is now called 'Neo-romanticism' as art historians try to shape the shifting seas of art ideas and work of the period.

When you walk around places where artists worked, you can feel the imagery reflected in the landscape. It makes me think of my own village and if I could create work using my village as a backdrop. Could I do 'The Ressurection at Bookham' or a historical painting 'Jane Asuten inspired by Bok Hill', etc.

This takes us back to the idea of this blog of Surrey Dreamtime. How could I combined the two elements from the title. I have a copy of Contemporary Aboringal paintings bookthat is an inspiration. This looking at inner space, rather than the visual 'realistic' one that our eyes are training to view.

Messing About in Boats

Looking towards Cookham


Up towards Marlow (a long way in the distance).

Last weekend, was taken out on boating on the Thames by family relations. It was wonderful sailing up from Cookham to Marlow and back again, we moored up on the river and had lunch. Whilst the rest of the family watched a DVD, I got out the sketch pad and sat drawing looking up to Cookham and then up towards Marlow.

I found that I had very little time to drawn as you might think the river as a quiet and slow place, but it much more lively and boisterous place. Maybe it was the big Canoe event, but it was probably the water drawing out people to go out and mess around in boats; as the sailing dingies did around the motor boats. So I was surprised how fast everyone moved and found I had to re-act quickly and some times wait for the sailing boats to return to fill in the starting sketch. In fact the picture contains two images of the boat at differing points on the river.

I wanted to create an impressionist feel with the duck and swans on the side of the boat only appearing as a rough coloured marks to add to the feeling of movement. Again, I tried to create a flowing line that represented the flowing of the river, but I wanted to keep the white space and leave it empty as well. Not sure how to resolve the situation, either one or the other?