Torn Paper Lines - Extra Activity

I was dithering dreadfully choosing a photograph that might work for a triptych of images until I had to take a trip up to North Yorkshire. On the drive from the north coast of Norfolk, through Lincolnshire and up through Yorkshire I experienced a diversity of landscapes in quite quick succession. The undulating Norfolk coast, the agricultural flatness of Lincolnshire, through the rolling but hilly countryside  of South Yorkshire and then the gaunt landscape of North Yorkshire. I was struck by a number of aspects of this northern  landscape: the simplicity of the natural lines, the simplicity of the man made marks on the landscape, the simple stark colours of the landscape. My idea for a triptych was solved.

The Landscape

I chose a very simple landscape to work with and one that really seemed to capture the landscape that I had driven through. Would be good to revisit this in winter:

Firstly I made a straight forward view of this:

Then I cut out the foreground and took a higher viewpoint:

And finally the foreground and middle distance:

The three together

One final go

I had one final go with this technique before deciding to move on. It's clearly such a useful technique I could have worked lots of pieces. Quite close to me is a priory destroyed by Henry viii - Castle Acre Priory. It is quite simply the most uplifting place; lots of bare stone upright structures some here and there with remaining plaster work and lots of doorways with views to the world outside.  All very enticing. I went over and took a photo, quite early in the day, of a doorway with a view of the grounds. 

There were lots of textures here and strong differences in light. I made a base of wax crayon resist with water colour and then more crayon on top. It was a useful exercise in itself to try and develop textured papers:

Then filling in the remainder, simplifying some of the details:

This reminded me of something from a child's book of fairy story.

I always stay clear of committing myself to painting landscapes, this may be because my father is a landscape painter and I've never felt up to the task and also I may have a different purpose going through my head when seeing things. However I've found this technique quite liberating. It delivers the business with a punch but none of the angst. I hope that makes sense.

Torn Paper Lines (Mod 3, Chpt 6)

Introduction

This chapter covered quite a range of activities from simply tearing paper to creating coloured paper landscapes. I found some parts of it a real challenge and had to do a lot of thinking about what was achievable for me and also what was achievable for the medium. It's undoubtedly the case that those activities that demand more, result in a better output of work than seemed possible, and also ended up heading towards a completely unexpected conclusion.

Activity 3.6.1(a) Torn paper lines. 

Using newspaper and wrapping paper to examine the way paper tears with and against the grain: Please note I didn't stick any of these down!

Activity 3.6.1 (b) Using varying weights of paper.

I got together a range of different papers for tearing. I ripped them up, made patterns and then painted over these. I got some interesting results especially with heavier weight paper that absorbed lots of colour around the raw edges allowing for a depth to appear in some of the work.

Selection of papers used

Pattern plus paper weight

I painted walnut ink over this pattern. There were some interesting results. The very heavy paper edges clearly show all the different layers of pulp that have gone into making it and the layout paper made really sharp clear lines. The blotting paper absorbed maximum colour as was expected but dried to a greyer hue.

Using the blotting paper and the layout paper I made some layered flower like pieces. They could have done with more planning probably but gave me a touch of what was achievable with paper and a simple colour wash.

Working on a black background with circles and very thick paper:

Making a decorative pattern:

Layering up with varying weights of paper, laid down randomly and using a glue stick. I think there's a lot more mileage in this idea:

I was really pleased with this.

Finally some regular curls in same manner as above. Looked a little like frills on fabric, maybe a little C18th:

Landscape

I started this activity by making up some roughly abstract landscapes:

a) Using different shades of pastel paper

b) Using various colourwash sheets:

c) Making a dry stone wall out of the pastel paper:

Using colour wash sheets to make landscapes:

I was initially very excited about this activity when I read over the chapter before I started work on it. However as I arrived at the subject it began to feel very difficult. I had problems choosing landscapes, some were too simple, others too complicated in terms of how I might make colours differentiate.(In particular where your eye might see diffences in distance when viewing the same shade of green). How would I deal with shadows. There was also an issue of sizing. Some pictures I looked at were very small and really couldn't be worked with in the manner suggested in the notes (with tracing paper). Feeling somewhat deflated I eventually chose a simple landscape with some distant hills, flowers in foreground etc. As I didn't have any remaining stashes of colour wash paper the sheets used in this activity were custom made.

Landscape 1:

Deciding on the composition

Used a splatter effect for flowers

Landscape 2

I found the first landscape a useful exercise but a bit antisceptic somehow. On a recent trip home I went to see a stone cairn called Ossians Way' (not my photograph btw):

I was really taken with the strong shapes and colours in this picture and the strong light falling on the stones. I was apprehensive about using this as a working image but took my time doing layers slowly.

The whole effect was so much better than I had anticipated, also I was surprised by my choice! Stone circles were not on my mind at all as I started this chapter. Ossian, by way of interest, was a mythological warrior hero who outlived his companions by travelling to Tir na Nog, where he stayed for 300 years. This stone circle is apparently the place he chose to re-emerge from the land of eternal youth.

Landscape 3:

The stone circle made me reflect on the possibilities of incorporating light into the colour wash landscapes and I was also interested in the vertical landscape. I had originally wondered about trees but thought the standing stones were so exciting to work with because of the sharp contrast in light and shade. I worked with an image of Callanish in Scotland. 

Lengthening the composition

As I remarked earlier, one of the issues for me involved the scale of images I was able to find. I decided that in order to work on a series of linked pieces I would need to find an image and scale it up manually. I want to work on the extra activity but have decided to do it as a separate blog entry and so I'll sign this chapter off now and work slowly on a 'triptych'over the next week or so.