Some time ago I’d began to realise just how stuck I felt. I’d been making detailed drawings in pen alongside small sketches of birds and botanicals for some years and was starting to find myself feeling like I was going through the motions. My woodland studies project where I drew in fineliner pen a series of British woodland landscapes had been my primary focus for a long time. It’s a project that I enjoyed doing very much and am very proud of too. There are 19 drawings in the collection and as I’m a lover of round numbers I will likely do one more to make a series of 20 but for the time being I wanted to challenge myself by doing something different, so that when I draw in fineliner pen again it doesn’t feel like a chore. I longed for a new project to get my teeth in to. It had been many years since I’d worked with paint and with colour and so I decided that I’d like to go in a new direction, putting colour at the centre of my work for a while.
I ordered a stack of tiny handmade papers by Khadi papers in order to be able to experiment with watercolour paint. Working on a very small scale comes more naturally to me and is less daunting when working with a new and unfamiliar medium. I found a photograph from my travels around Argentina to work from, a beautifully atmospheric landscape of forest in the Nahuel Huapi National Park, Patagonia. I started by putting a wash of colour over the paper, allowing it to dry and then putting down another wash, layering up the paint and also using water and kitchen towel to dab away at the colour too. I used the finest brush I had to paint some tree trunks and branches but found it frustrating how I couldn’t get the tiny details that I’m used to putting in my work. I enjoyed the finished paintings which I stuck in my sketchbook alongside a pencil sketch of the composition. I started another four paintings, working on them simultaneously. The paintings came out quite saturated in colour, I enjoyed aspects of the vibrancy but wanted to try and mute the colours a little to echo colours that are found in impressionist paintings. I borrowed a very fine brush from my partner, one intended to use for painting miniature figurines. The brush felt revolutionary, I was able to create very tiny details on the paper.
Rather than spend a lot of time looking through all my photographs for references I decided to make ten paintings from one photograph focusing on different elements like composition and colour and trying different techniques like layering up wet paint and using more of a dry brush technique. By working in this way I found that I could work faster and experiment more freely, allowing a very different outcome each time despite the exact same photograph being used for reference. I shared the paintings on social media and put them up for sale as part of the Artist Support Pledge. Artist Support Pledge is an initiative conceived by Matthew Burrows where artists put their work for sale for no more than £200 each, when the artist makes £1000 they pledge to but the work of another artist taking part, spending £200 on their work. I was overwhelmed by the positive response and the sales of the miniature paintings and could see how much my work had improved in a short time.
I finished the first series of ten and turned my attention to another composition, one of a landscape in Tosh, India. Again I worked on several paintings at once, capturing different aspects and trying out different techniques. The more ‘open’ landscape was more challenging, it made me realise why I’m so drawn to forests and enclosed woodland spaces, they feel more magical and demand more detail. I’m now working on the third series of paintings which are inspired by a landscape at Iguazu Falls in Argentina. The paintings have taught me so much and feel like a relief as they are so different to my usual work. Hopefully they still capture what it is that I’m hoping all of my work does, an impression of a place with emphasis on light and the magical qualities of the natural world.
Have you changed direction drastically within your work? If you have how do you feel about it? Has it taught you anything?
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