Destination Panorama

Happy New Year to everyone. I hope you all had a lovely time over Christmas. Apologies for not posting until now. There's no particular reason for the gap. More like a number of reasons such as Christmas preparations, family time, visitors and visiting, and then bedding back into the school-work-home routine in the New Year.

As you know, I'm part of an International Moleskine Exchange, which is almost at it's close, with most of the Moleskine's nearly full now. I've been naughtily sitting on this Moleskine since November 08, the subject of which is Maps and Destinations. I knew as soon as I received it and saw the other's work what I wanted to do - the possible destinations reached by the road outside my house, including the bus stop I often use and draw figures at. This is a sneak preview, as part of the Moley agreement was not to post the full image until it's been received by the next person on the list. So you'll have to wait a little longer before you see the full panorama.

It was raining..

... all day yesterday, so I didn't dare take the camera up Penshaw Hill. But, I did do some work in the Moleskine Exchange I'm involved in. I'd been sitting on Brian McGurgan's book, the theme of which is STRETCH, and I'd been stuck for two months lacking both inspiration and drive. Anyway, the exchange has had a bit of a surge of energy this last week or so, so I took a look at it yesterday, opening the concertina pages which people had drawn and painted in before me, and I was immediately struck by the strong colour themes of purple and blue, orange and yellow which were running through it. There was also a great linear continuity which I wanted to add to. I won't publish the final piece just yet, because I'm posting it onto Lindsay of Non Linear Arts now, and we agreed not to spoil the surprise so that the recipient will get to look at it. But we are allowed to show 'teasers', so here's mine.

Penshaw in the Moleskine

Back in June 2008 I made this piece for the Moleskine Exchange I'm involved in. The subject of this book is Freedom, and I loved the sense of scale I was able to achieve. As I've explained before, Penshaw Monument is huge and I'm only quite small, and have been visiting it since I was even smaller. So when I'm drawing it, I want to get across the sense of scale, that it's too big for me to take in, that it's too big to fit on the page, or in a camera's viewfinder.
This image was made by lino-print on paper I'd pre-painted with acrylic paints. I made three prints of the monument, and I printed the sky directly into the Moleskine book. The printed images were then cut up and re-assembled, making the monument quite textural on the page.
Now I intend to make more of these images, using similar construction techniques, exploring different backgrounds and colour-ways, as this was done in summer, and we are now well into autumn here. So much so that the constant drizzle we're getting has prevented me photographing Penshaw. Digital camera + driving rain = insurance claim.

Moleskine Exchange beginning

A while back I invited a group of artists to join me in an exchange of Moleskine sketch books. We bought one each, and each chose a theme for the book. Then we drew or painted in them and sent them onto the next artist on the list. My subject was Genesis, and here's the start I made in it before I sent it on to Casey in America. I couldn't post the image immediately because I wanted Casey to be the first to see it when the book arrived on his door mat.
When I first thought of the theme I had no idea what I was going to depict, so I started reading the Bible (as you do) for inspiration. It then became clear that, as I was going to be the first person drawing in this book, I was the creator of the book. So I chose to paint myself as the creator, with chaos above, mimicking William Blake's pose in his 'The Ancient of Days'.
I am very excited to see what Casey draws next in my book. Since then I've received Vivien's book themed 'Landscapes', and Gesa's book themed 'Lines', but I can't post images of them yet because Casey hasn't yet received them.