Wednesday, October 28. Three experiments.

Rummaging again through old work revealed some things from years ago that either need a new approach or they should be re-cycled. The first one is a quick sketch done about 3 years ago in a demo somewhere. A paint sketch from a photo of the impossibly pretty village of Castle Combe in Dorset. I photographed it after I had applied some arbitrary dabs of red .

I continued to attack it with yellow and blue. No reference to the original photo. My aim is just to use the sketch as a vehicle for bright colours working against each other.

I then discovered that I do have the original photo, and referred to it a little while adding more paint, especially ultramarine blue.

More of each colour. Where is this going? I don't want to improve the realism. I don't want yet another chocolate box scene. Think I will go further in making this rural idyll into a nightmare!

The practice of painting over bad pictures with layers of gesso and acrylic revealed this canvas from many years ago left as a background to paint over sometime. It had Indian red acrylic to the centre and dark Van Dyke brown to the edges. All on layers of thick gesso. It had a rough, ridged texture so I sanded it down a lot revealing a complex of white lines of gesso. Rather than paint it all out again in a flat way I started doodling some marks in thin red acrylic, following the flow of the white lines. A little thin cerulean blue in between the red.

More lines of thin red.

To give some structure to the design I ruled some lines across the picture with a view to letting these lines interrupt the colours to some extent.

This is how it stands at the moment. A dark abstract field of lines. Should go a lot further.

This is how it stands at the moment. A dark abstract field of lines. Should go a lot further. Another work I have hated for maybe 20 years is a plywood structure with a tetrahedral recess that was then badly painted. I again attacked it with sand paper to make a surface that will grip layers of gesso.

Gesso being applied to the recess.

Now it is all white. What do I do with it?

So I did a few ideas in my sketch book.

These all seem too fussy. I am intrigued by the way it is hard to see that the triangular form goes inwards. Even I keep seeing a kind or pyramid sticking upwards. I must try and harness this illusion in some way. Or should it remain as a “minimal “ relief sculpture?