The wagon faces North

           

Autumn, Winter, 2016-17

   

The Wagon studio has moved! It faces north ...............

I 'm now surrounded by Ash trees, Wych Elm and Elder, Hazel and Hawthorn bushes in the foreground and the gaunt branches of a long dead Elm across my eye line as I look out of the window.
Changing position has also given me fresh inspiration for my printmaking: to translate the tangled branch shapes into collograph form I cut out paper shapes, pull threads out of garden twine, cut into the netting that holds the Christmas oranges and PVA them onto a card surface.
This is how it looks - the collograph plate is on the top, part of the print is showing underneath......

Getting the body of colour on the I wanted for the background proves difficult so I experiment with painting acrylic washes and print the collograph plate on top, trying to get the effect of the winter branches against sunset colours.

Late winter 2017
If I look out of the wagon on the south side the muddy track leads down to the farm. Its February, the hedgerows are still bare against the late afternoon sky. I use the garden twine again to recreate the hedgerow shapes, and this time use carborundum grit to get a muddy surface effect of the track.
i use background washes of transparent colour for the winter sky.

I ve enlarged the image so that the textures stand out - the carborundum makes the lane look a bit too rocky, and controlling the textures to give the perspective illusion difficult.