Week 21 – Photography in the woods and focusing on the wind

This week, after my tutorial with Ed and Gino, using a different inspiration point was a key interest to me. As at home I live in a rural place, I wanted to see how the place around me, my location, could affect how I produce artwork. To do this, I went into my local woodland to try and capture some interesting shots I thought would be relevant to my project, including architecture, shadows, lines etc.

In relation to this, the idea was that in my previous post, the more successful experiments were those completed in just the black permanent marker on white paper. Therefore, once I had taken these photographs I both wanted to invert them and put them in black and white to achieve the monochrome finish. I only did each with a few on photoshop just to see how they would turn out but overall, they turned out better than expected!

I especially like these 3 linked below. The first one shows the collision of hundreds of twigs, grass and thorns creating these criss-cross patterns filling the photograph. I decided this one looked much better in black and white as it allowed for this simplicity than only focused on the foreground and background. It also comes across to me as uncomfortable, like there is nowhere to climb out and away from the photo – linking back to having little control or being controlled by something. In the second photo, I captured the old winding house (Granville is famous for its coal mining industrial history) in the sunlight, with the shadows playing a large part. I firstly edited this photo to black and white, then inverted it. What I especially love about this photograph is the arch in the building dragging you through the ‘window’, with the eerie shadows dancing on the brickwork too it allows for a somewhat scary atmosphere to unfold. The final image, I’ve selected is similar to the first but put solely into inverted. The dry branches seem to weave into one another creating knots and pathways leading into the back of the photo. I decided to choose inverted rather than monochrome as the bright white of the background highlight the darkness of the branches in the foreground – linking to my sharp contrast of experiments last week. I have included photographs 1, 2 and 3 below:

After I had selected these three images, I wanted to work further on the experiments I conducted in Week 20. I set up a similar contraption to the pieces that were created by attaching a sharpie with string and allowing the wind to form patterns and mark-making. This time I tried black and red, I knew black would work quite well as it was the most successful last time however I wanted to try and keep it cleaner and leave the pen and paper out for longer. In addition, I also tried to use red to link in with my use throughout my work of feminism and power. Below I have attached the two original pen experiments – both were done on A3 paper:

I was overall really satisfied with how they turned out, much better than my previous ones in Week 20. This is because I moved the pen halfway through to a new position which allowed for more of the paper to be covered. It was also a much windier day, so the pen was thrashed about on the paper more creating these wild scratches on the surface with the most successful, in my opinion, being the black pen marker. After these were completed, I cut the A3 paper into 4 sections and scanned these into my printer at home uploading them to photoshop. From here I began playing around with how these related to my photographs taken previously, the twigs and branches clearly echoing the pen marks created by the wind’s movement. Therefore, I started to invert the two pen drawings into sections, leaving two ‘normal’ and two inverted, this allowed for a geometric yet curved piece combining my photographs and my favourite weather-related technique from my week of experiments. Here is the selection of photos I edited based on the two originals:

I felt that the black and white inverted photoshopped images worked a lot better than the red ones due to the simplicity of the contrast. Number 5 especially shows the chaotic energy and weave of the branches I had photographed earlier in the week, using the 4 separate section allowed for a balance that somewhat ‘controlled the uncontrollable’. I absolutely love letting the wind ‘take over’ and create these energetic, atmospheric pieces so definitely want to continue with these. Using photographs gave me a starting point and helped me realise how less is more in terms of colour sometimes. Using chance in my work is key now as it is helping me progress as an artist, especially when using the element of wind power.