Sketching and painting 7th March 2014

I have been drawing using ink and pen and also watercolour.  Just really playing around to see what happens and what comes out.   Using my photographs as primary research, I have scanned in what I have done.

photograph of an alleyway leading down to the sea 

drawn in gel pen this is an alleyway between houses leading out to the sea - looks better scanned than it does the original - what could I do with this next?   I could use text where the steps are.... which is what I have done (see below).   

Again another image leading down to the sea - I have not included the sea but more of the sky and horizon - the darker colours of greys black and orange show the sun setting 

a bundle of sea "stuff" 

Using Photoshop I have opened up the scanned images and they actually look different on screen, or I am seeing them differently, in a more positive light.   On paper they look to me a tad dull but when on screen, the lines are enhanced.  

In photoshop, I have added some colour.  Initially to the drain pipes which I coloured blue, using only 49% opacity so that the original lines can be seen under the blue.   In the middle of the picture there is a set of steps which look nothing like steps as I have been unable to achieve that look - presumably something to do with the angles of my lines.   Therefore I thought of putting foot prints on them and I opened another photograph which had my feet on it and using the magnetic lasso tool, I traced around the feet, copied and pasted into my sketch.  The impact of the feet at the size I had copied them, the tone of the flesh against the pen drawing hit me.  To me it resembled a surreal image.  I have worked on this image adding more texture from original photographs using the clone tool.  I copied rocks, sand and the sea and the effect I have printed out contains cloned wall colour and the sea and some sand where the steps are.   I have printed it onto linen fabric through my own printer.   

The linen fabric comes A4 size and has a backing sheet.  We talked about this fabric recently after I had been researching fabric business cards and Lance thought we had a printer to be able to do this and it turns out we indeed do have such a printer.  However it hadn't been used for a while, and need cartridges so Emma suggested photocopying an image onto the fabric. We actually used a cotton sheet of fabric and the photocopier produced an unexpected but interesting result and I wanted to try it on linen.  I have subsequently printed it on my inkjet printer.  I was concerned that it might get jammed but it went through the printer happily.   My printer is in need of new cartridges so the colour may be improved when I replace them.  

I can see the potential though of creating more pieces of work similar to this on the different fabrics.  The fabric is quite sheer so could be layered up.  This is something I will continue to sample.   The fabric pieces can be obtained from http://www.craftycomputerpaper.co.uk/default.aspx.  The linen fabric is around £3 per sheet and the cotton only £1.25 so there is bit of a different.   The cotton is more sheer than the linen.

This is the different types of fabric that Craft Computers can provide to print on 

The text I added first and then the feet came later however whilst creating layers, I removed the text and decided the image is more thought provoking without it.  Whilst studying for my Foundation Diploma, I remember I received feedback for a photograph project on sheds and I had in effect ruined it by putting text on each image so I am taking on board that feedback now!

I am going to now contact my peers and ask for their feedback.  What do they see?  What do they think of it?  How could it be improved?

My personal opinion is that I love the effect I have created.  It was unintentional, and from a sketch I thought wasn't any good, I have made something from it.   From here, as it is printed on linen I can stitch into it giving more texture.

Feedback from peers:  Lotty and Becky both gave feedback which really confirmed my thoughts.  The text isn't necessary.   The right foot could be cropped further around the ankle area.  The mixture of the original line drawing and then the adding of the colour in photoshop and the reality of the photo of the feet work well together.