'2nd Field dead centre'...Drawing...Journey...

The works I've been producing for my journey project have been very controlled and are starting to look like brochure illustrations rather than art drawings. I know I can draw in this style and have lost my way with the project, almost like being blinkered by an old style. Don't get me wrong, the pictures are pleasing but not what I came on this course to do. They look exactly like what they are supposed to be, BORING high school projects!! I need to look deeper into what I'm thinking about or trying to portray, to realise a feeling rather than just a picture and make drawings that are new to me and different from what I can already do.
I'm concentrating on 3 fields which are a short walk from my house and plan to produce 3 sets of work based on each field. Each field at first glance looks quite ordinary but the more I walk there, the more I see. An old barn, small woodland, animals, hedgerows etc all need to be explored as part of this project.

I made one of the field journeys at night under the full moon and the difference really helped with what I'm trying to achieve. The lack of bright light distorted my view and I took some shots to work from, keeping in mind the dark tones and moon lit bright areas which moved as I changed position and direction. I also wanted to get the whole journey into one image and thought a collage would achieve this. I decided to use dark charcoal to give a feeling of the time of the journey. 

This image is more in line with what I want to make. I don't want to produce straight forward images, but make things that force you to read whats going on. I'm really pleased with this first drawing and keen to carry on to see where it leads and I feel like I've cut the strings that tie me to my old style of drawing. 

Something else I looked at was trying to tie a photo and a drawing of the same scene but from a different angle to show 2 views in one image. To do this I decided on drawing an image in pen on clear acetate then taking a photo. I wanted to some how involve the process of 'moving position' into the making of the final image and decided to import the images into I-Movie and take a long exposure photo as the images cross transformed through the frame on the monitor, (like 2 images in a movie) changing position, as I did outside at the barn. I didn't want to use photoshop as it would make the picture too perfect and the factor of chance was added to the process by not being exactly sure when to press the shutter release to capture both images on top of each other. 

This idea is really interesting to me and needs to be explored more. It ties together photography, drawing and movement into one image. It also brings together two very different ages, the barn has been imported into the future through the use of a brand new Mac. 

This process of using I-Movie to layer images on top of each other using the movement of the still images gives me a lot to explore. In these prints I have used a drawing of a tree and four close up photo's of sheet metal panels used as fencing surrounding the area where the tree was standing. The resulting images show layers of history and a depth of texture made up from years of being battered by the weather. I like the idea of using modern technology to produce images of the past. 

The next step is to take these images back out into the barn and project them onto the building itself, maybe at night? Or inside the barn, across the walls, on the roof etc and film the results. I like the idea of projecting the sheet metal panel shots onto the bark of a tree tying together the man made and the natural elements of the landscape.