I have been recovering from long covid over the past month. This left me feeling very run down and only able to work in shorter bursts. I decided to stop working in the studio and to concentrate on drawings - smaller things that can be worked on with an intensity without the ensuing exhaustion. I used pen on an A5 landscape book and have been making numerous studies of paintings that I either enjoy or have certain elements in them that I like: Renoir, Pissarro, Velasquez, Rembrandt, Manet, Degas and others have been the source - nearly always a painting rather than a drawing - the move from paint colour to pen line being the intriguing activity. The pen is forced to move, be loose and active - to build the form and work the drawing into some sort of resolution.
I have a huge number of sketchbooks of all sizes full of drawings (see the sketchbook section of this site) and I have thought how private they are, how thousands of drawings never see the light of day and gather dust on shelves over the years. I decided to use the more recent works in books and import them into the computer and start using them in different ways to get them seen on line and give them a new lease of life. Alongside these sketchbook works, I have produced digital workings of current ink drawings - both canvas and paper works, plus raided my own back catalogues for paintings that also fed into digital works.
I have enjoyed creating these works as screen based art - I can see them being printed as giclee prints, also. it has made me think about what works on screen. My paintings are very physical and depend upon surface to animate their colour, yet screens deny this encounter. What then for a screen? I am curious as to how colour is perceived through the screen - generated light as opposed to reflected. How lateral colour functions and to avoid using “effects” for their own sake - complex carbs are fattening so to speak. Furthermore, It has also thrown up the what next for the paintings question. How does this work relate to future studio painting. Intriguing times.