Part One: Project 1 - Stage 3: Exercise 1

Monday 6th September 2010 - Using marks to create surface textures

The next photo is of a tree - the trunk is old and weathered, it has layers of soft, peeling bark.


Old Tree, Portmeirion, N. Wales

 Using an aperture to focus on just a part of the photograph, I created textural sketches using pen and ink, wax crayon and watercolour wash.

Quink ink 1: I used a wide bamboo pen - this created unexpected 'white spaces' in the work. I then worked over the area with a narrower pen - this created the feeling of layers of bark.
This is quite a nice technique - you have no control over where the ink will stay and where the spaces appear.



Sketch using wide bamboo pen

 Quink ink 2: Using a narrower pen created nice, flowing lines. I was able to work over areas, change direction of the lines - in order to create the feeling of the bark 'wrapping' itself in layers around the trunk.



Sketch using narrow reed pen

 Wax crayon and watercolour wash: 'Broken' lines were created by rolling the edge of the crayon onto the surface of the paper.
Heavy layers of dark coloured wax crayon were applied on the darker side of the trunk.
Less intense colours of crayon were applied sparingly on the lighter side of the trunk.
White crayon was used to mask the area where the sun was shining through the branches.
Watercolour paint was then washed over the top of the crayon - this also created some interesting textures, leaving 'blobs' of paint on top of the wax.
Out of the 3 techniques - this was my favourite to create.


Sketch using wax crayon and watercolour wash.

 This is finished page of textural studies of the old tree.


Textural studies of the tree