field drawings

sketchbook - fields drawingsI think these four are the most successful ones (all are in a landscape sketchbook, about 9" x 12")...sketchbook drawing - stormy rain clouds over fieldsThis one is in mixed media - ordinary ink pen, graphite pencil, indian ink and a little watercolour...  the stratus-to-cumulus clouds are perhaps darker than intended, but this adds to the impending sense of rain ahead...sketchbook drawing - sky, clouds, fields and skyThis sketch is a little more gestural, drawn very quickly, the sky appeared darker than the fields in places (the sun came out sporadically). I used an Indian ink pen (with a nib more like a stiff pointy brush) and some watercolour.sketchbook drawing - hill road and fieldsLooking up towards the hill. I didn't add any tone to the fields as I liked the gentle movement in the lines - and I was concentrating more on the scrubby hedgerow, the curved perspective of the road and the line of telegraph poles. Sometimes you stop doing a drawing not because it is finished, but because it says just enough as it is...sketchbook drawing - ploughed winter fieldsA ploughed field... as the sun went in and out the long hedgerow cast shadows in line with the furrows... I think I need to find out (via an old map) if any of these fields have local names...There can be no better way of experiencing landscape than through immediate drawing - out in the elements, moving focus, drawn to the gestures and details of ploughed striations and meandering hedgerows, aware of the changing light and the weather (it began to rain...)

another journey into colour

It is very curious where this virtual journey into colour is leading, as every made-up colour combination finds its corresponding place on earth...Tsavo, mixed media collagraph on paper and canvasTsavo East National Park, Kenya  (image courtesy of flickr)The blue sky and scorched red earth give this vista some aesthetic appeal, but without fauna it looks to be a barren wilderness. I can imagine the occasional roaming herd of elephants emerging from a clearing in the trees, or seeing buffalo drinking at a water hole, but there will also be the parched bones of the less fortunate ones hidden in the scrub, savaged by the lions. This image gives no indication of a highway much travelled by the safari-hungry tourists, although a quick search on youtube returns more than enough shaky videos, with the resident wildlife often appearing less than amused. This is still a hunter's landscape, of man and beast....[Tsavo, detail]I am not sure how long I will pursue this idea, mapping colours to a location, but at the present moment it has its rewards, with the added gratification of getting one's work out there soon after it is made. These works are very small at 5" x 5", and are, in effect little objects (but not objet trouvé), faux tablet mementos to places that I have never visited. The larger canvases (the edgescapes) are distilled vistas of places I have been to, but to me they resonate with more distant and imagined landscapes scarred and ravaged by the elements. The farmscapes have their obvious mechanical, minimalist geometry, but on some days I question their formality, they seem too detached from their source. Making larger works also takes up all available space, so the work gets restricted by its surroundings and develops much more slowly. I guess that all artists have to deal with those if only moments - of a lack of space and resources. You can adapt your ideas or your work, but there is always a doubt inherent in that decision, in that it is a compromise, not a solution. That perpetual lack of space issue forces the change for now...