PROJECT 6

ORIGINAL MARKS BY LMJ

DORITH’S RESPONSES

These are three very different images. Two are quite dark, bringing up the meeting with darkness, but also mystery… perhaps the dark night of the soul… The third has something else. I went with what came up at the moment, so what came up is part of the inner places I’m dealing with. I don’t love these images, and don’t feel beauty has anything to do with them, but since it is all an experiment, I am sharing them. I took the small format and the photocopy technology as a given and checked out where it leads me.

LMJ’S RESPONSES

Left to right images on first two rows are start and finished (perhaps) versions of my first attempts. My first idea was to put a second version of the apple blossoms in negative against a white disk and have the top right flowers against a white disk– that didn’t quite work out, so went on from there and was driven to colour! Oh no. Seems somehow that I think of colour in graphics as a failure to make design work without it. Funny as I have never done a black and white painting. Second idea was to use concentric rings to play off the left side disk, maybe give some suggestion of it being a window into a further depth rather than an object. Not sure if that quite works. Have several more ideas I want to try, maybe ending up with a group of 4-6 versions that are interesting to look at together. The computer graphics programs seem to push me in that direction, but watching what others are getting out of paint and scratching and direct mark making has me itching to get off the computer and into paint. At the same time, I need to try to actually make something other than doing class assignments with the computer program in order to consolidate what I’ve struggled to learn this past year. One other thing that surfaced in my approaching this project– I didn’t want to look at anybody else’s developments before I was started a bit with my own developing. Not sure what to make of that– seems a bit against the grain of what we are trying to manifest together?

So now there are four– I think of them in a row, horizontally in this order, but can’t seem to make that happen on this page. Not sure if the progression quite works, but best I can do this week– evolution in reality is probably not perfectly linear:)

DANIELLE’S RESPONSES

“More mystery. Something powerful about “knowing” the original image already and seeing development”. (AC).

ALISON’S RESPONSES

Painted board with gold poster paint, then sanded it back.  Added image — using app on ipad, Richard’s school compass, tracing paper, pins and a needle to scratch the line into the board so it doesn’t get lost if/when I paint over it.  Hard work! And very different to my usual way of working, which was interesting.  It felt right to spend care tracing someone else’s image into my board.

Below attempts to make an “interesting background” with reference to Morris Graves, as Laura has spotted in her comment below!  Chalk pastel dust rubbed into gold surface, finding the drawing again.

Next stage was to paint with blue — not as bright as the photo suggests — with the idea of sanding that back to reveal the gold.  Can’t shift it though!  It’s too plasticky.  I think it needed an electric sander on it…..  Then compounded the problem even more by adding white on top.  Fortunately this stage was not recorded……!

As I said, I’m longing for the simplicity of 8″ photocopy paper and pencil line.

Scraping back. Searching for Apple blossom. Eventually finding it, and carving it in with lino cutter. Adding gold and white. Scratching into white, and adding to blues, pinks around apple blossom with crayon.

Final one, adding a sunball after seeing Danielle’s images — a need for another entity in the space, plus a gold offcut of the hardboard, the idea inspired lmj’s paintings.