Suddenly one shape leapt out at me, looking for all the world like a poppy seedhead, that wonderful sculptural shape that so many people are clearly inspired by.
I remembered having some dried seedheads from a couple of years back, collecting dust in my 'room'. Perfect for giving me a bit of sketching practice first of all, giving input for something else later on....hopefully.
So I set to work. Here are some sketches. I guess the important thing is that this stage really made me look at the seedheads to really understand their structure better. The idea being that my final image will be more real and more 'of me' because of this observation. In theory.
Then I happened to go to the Hiroshige exhibition at Winchester's Discovery Centre (on until May 24th). The exhibition is a series of woodcuts from the marvellous Ashmolean's collection. The subject matter is classic Japanese woodcut material: views at the 53 stations along the Tokaido Road, done in the 1830s. Well worth popping in to see. And the exhibition is free!
So as I mooched along I stopped in front of this
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| Utagawa Hiroshige - 53 stations of the Tokaido Road - Ashmolean collection |
I really loved the delicate rendering of the depth of field in the early morning fog using different muted greys. Maybe I can use that somehow in my poppy image using printed seedhead silhouettes, I thought, rather ambitiously!
Later, I started to carve some adigraf shapes, based on my sketches.
A couple of weeks ago, I ordered a gelli plate from Gelli Arts. Following some on-line tutorials I also carved a polystyrene plate for the background and some OHP film too. First efforts were mixed and pretty unpredictable, but a lot of fun to do.
This was my favourite. Sort of like looking through poppy seedheads into the setting sun.
My travelling sketchbook page was this (I thought I needed to be brave enough to sketch directly into the sketchbook).
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