23 Sep 21 by justatest
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The colour
Blue, orange, pink and green. Not exactly the most harmonious colour scheme but then, as previously mentioned the intention is to express the flow of the lines through that jumble of arcs. I´m hoping it´ll be easier to follow the individual discordance of a colour whilst it twists and swirls from end to end as the line travels from the ground up into the trees.
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End of the line
I feel it necessary to do something with the end of the pipe but not sure exactly what. As just a test I cut up some of it and wrapped it around the end, found a ball amongst the trees, stuffed it in the opening and painted it red. Not really convinced but I´ll leave it for the present to get on with the more important stuff, and return to it if anything better strikes me.
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Paint
Begun sealing branches with waterproof glue then afterwards applying an oil-based undercoat. The planks of wood are temporarily placed to allow me reach the top with the ladder. At this point the grey undercoat layer is complete.
It´s turning out to be the largest work for many years, in terms both of dimensions and the act of finicky, dogged, slogging away process. And through cold and dreary winter months of little daylight to boot.
However the single colour approach doesn´t read so well. It appears increasingly as a tangled confusion whereas I´d prefer the quality of flow to be more evident.
Perhaps at this stage a 4-colour approach will ease the jumble of arcs with each of the four lines of branches a different colour traveling from the base to the top? If I go with that then it´s going to become even more involved (yet again), and the work will likely continue well into Summer.
It has occurred to me that what I´m doing here is simply a scaled-up version of this earlier piece [LINK]. Which of the two has more value? One that takes half an hour to put together with qualities of freshness, immediacy and accessibility, or the imposing yet laborious one that looks like it´s going to take a year to complete?
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Camouflaged
Branches of willow, alder, oak, pine, sycamore, hazel. Whatever´s available is employed in covering the length of the line.
However it´s a lot of work to little effect as it´s not really visible from a distance, and is in fact beginning to disappear into the surrounding foilage. Looks like I´ll have to paint the wood to make it more evident.
Seems like the work on this one will now extend well into the Spring.
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Cross-hatch
Two points:
1. After a while I felt that the drainage pipe was a bit severe, and a little plain, hanging there on it´s own. However I couldn´t come up with a solution to jazz it up to make it more interesting.
2. For a long time I have been wondering if there´s any real advantage in documenting the art process of these works i.e. is this website just a waste of time?
It was while I was working on the webpage for the previous piece [LINK] (Base Curves) that the idea of copying those cut branches and inserting them into the holes of the pipe might be what I was looking for to soften the appearance. A bit like cross-hatching I suppose.
So in this case the preparation of a webpage for an earlier work actually provided me with the idea to possibly resolve my issue. I suppose that´s one reason to keep on with documenting the process. Though whether in the end all this website stuff is a complete waste of time I´ve yet to find out.
Now (coming back to this work) if I continue with the branch insertion idea all the way to the top, I may be busy for the whole Winter.
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Draw the line
There. Simply done in the end with a few bits of rope and a ladder. I´m curious to see how it´ll withstand the winter storms.
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Plein air layout
Following on an earlier work of a Plein Air painting of a tree [LINK], I figured I´d do a Plein Air drawing this time. What's more; this drawing I can actually step into.