Drawing and Abstracting Natural Textures.

I began this study block by revisiting the final outcomes of my previous project after a break over Christmas allowed me to have a fresh outlook on them and to more easily define the route I will take with my next project. I will take the idea of combining drawing with rock rubbings that I explored in previous work, an example shown below, and explore three dimensional texture and relief in greater depth in a continuation from this piece. I will experiment with larger scale works, both similar fabric pieces (potentially stretching them) and with installation, perhaps developing a relief floor piece incorporating rock rubbing and drawing to create a texture similar to a rocky surface. Though this may show practical issues for viewing as an audience would not be able to walk upon the textured fabric without damaging both the markings on it and the structure itself which would likely not be strong enough to hold human weight.

Large Scale Rock Rubbing and Drawing Relief Piece.

As part of my initial research for this project I photographed and collected a selection of rocks on Gylly and Swanpool beach, focusing on the lines and patterns on their surfaces. I began to notice the similarities in the appearance and surface patterns of many different types of natural forms in my immediate environment, the most dominant being rocks and the sea.

This discovery gave way to a set of merged drawings where one textural study flowed into another of a different subject matter on the opposite sketchbook page; the first was a drawing of rock texture going into a drawing of a crashed wave on sand and the second was a wave pattern drawing into a rock texture study. This technique gave the impression of movement across the surface of the paper from left to right, following the direction of the drawing in a similar way that the eye may move across a landscape viewing these textures for real. The sea to rock piece is the most organic and natural in appearance as the textures themselves are more similar to each other, whereas the rock to sea drawing juxtaposes two rather contrasting images – the rock side in that piece is much more linear and angular than the other side in comparison to the two flowing, softer images of the sea to rock piece.

Rock to Sea Drawing.

Sea to Rock Drawing.

I also used books to research landscape imagery to inspire my work in terms of colour palettes, forms and enabling me to view some natural landscapes very different to those in my local vicinity of Cornwall, such as mountainous environments. These mountainous landscapes were generally most inspiring due to their naturally high concentration of visible rocks, the subject at the heart of my practice, though it was also the icy landscape of glaciers and snowy mountains that drew me in. Glaciers, despite not being made of rock, have a similar form and structural nature to that of rocks; were they to be colour graded to earthy greys and browns a glacier would likely look like a rocky mountain or formation. The most useful of the books I researched was ‘Expedition’ (Martinsson, T and Wainwright, C, 2012), containing such images as mentioned above. Though ‘Artists Land Nature’ (Gooding, M, 2002) provided inspiring landscapes in the form of photographs of the work of Richard Long – the general colour palettes and visceral nature of the landscapes in which his works are created are what I focused on currently.