Wool Gathering

Posted on September 1, 2024 by iansblog

Wool Gathering

Another New Studio

Studio 05/08/2024

After disassembling the sculptures and creating an empty studio I embarked upon a period of rumination. Is the next step to develop a better VR for the ‘Red Gardens’ or to stop for the moment and find a new direction? I spent a week or so working on the bigger ‘Gardens Project’ adapting it for a later version of Unity and working out how to direct the audience through it. The problem remains that people are not used to any agency in works of this nature and would, it seems, rather be led. My study of this is with a very small sampling of visitors to the studio but giving a user anything other than the ability to move, stop and start again, introduces far too much of a learning curve for the controls.

Flower Bed Cards 12/08/2024

Flower Bed Cards 14/08/2024

As a side note this blog’s illustrations are presented in chronological order through August and are discussed later on.

The many things I need to resolve are both frustrating and make me feel guilty because I’m sitting in a big empty space and working at a computer and as result of this I am engaged in ‘Wool Gathering’ I link to the OUP blog rather than the dictionary because of the discussion. Wool Gathering is generally regarded to be a fruitless pursuit but after examining the etymology of the idiom Liberman suggests that this must not have originally been the case as the activity is goal oriented and required concentration. That’s why I think it fits with the things I’ve been doing this month.

I have an absolute love for and a profound difficulty with flowers. I love to see them grow, to watch them in the garden year to year, to see which return and which retreat, contemplating their intricacies. Every so often I draw them and fail miserably in making that record. The drawings I’ve done this month reflect this difficulty varying between the abstraction that records the garden most accurately and the representation that becomes miserably like a flowery thing. The more like flowers they look the less like flowers they are.

I made the twenty small images above as a set to arrive at a card to send to a friend. They are derived from photographs of the flower bed from above. The bed has perennials planted amongst pelargoniums and various self seeded flowers like Nigella and Red Shank.

Flowers (1) 16/08/2024

After I’d finished the cards I spent some time making some larger drawings over the sheets I’d used to protect the floor when I was painted the red sculptures. I’m just concerned to pick elements that give the impression of the flower bed.

Flowers (2) 16/08/2024

The first two worked quite well I think because the flower forms are not obvious.

Flowers (3) 19/08/2024

The next two are less successful because the big flowers are too flowery.

Flowers (4) 19/06/2024

I struggled particularly with this one because of the Gazania that dominates. I got frustrated enough to build myself a table.

Studio 23/08/2024

Alongside these there are three paintings made in my attic at home, this one oil on board, the others on paper.

Flowers (5) 26/08/2024

Flowers (6) 26/08/2024

Flowers (7) 26/08/2024

I’m still in two minds about these.

Studio 28/08/2024

Exploring the method further I’ve stretched paper for more drawing and I’d begun a larger drawing before realising that the lack of variation on the surface before starting was limiting the possibilities for the drawing.

Flower (8) 28/08/2024

This is the drawing after I applied loose red and white emulsion over the drawing I’d already started that was failing.

Flowers (8) 29/08/2024

This is the drawing the next day after I’d started to bring it back towards a finish.

Flowers (2) Maquette 29/08/2024

Flowers (2) Maquette 29/08/2024

The real purpose of the drawings is to work towards sculpture and then take this into the virtual space. After some works in the sketchbook I built this maquette form the second flower drawing. This is where wool gathering gets you, towards something even if I’m not quite sure what it is yet.

Drawing

I’ve continued to draw every day;

The August drawings can be seen here

Draw Every Day – August 24

Draw Every Day - August 24 Continuing to draw every day, finished book 18 on 24th August and ...
See photo »

…and the July images here

Draw Every Day - July 24 Continuing to draw every day, finished book 17 on 10th July and continued in new book using brush pens and a mixture of black, grey, sepia and sanguine ink. I was 65 on the 8th July. The drawings are made any time from 9:00 am at the breakfast table and occasionally later in the day if I'm away from home. The drawings have been posted since the beginning, 6th May 2020, on instagram https://www.instagram.com/latham_1959 You can see previous months through the galleries page https://www.ian-latham.com/blog/galleries or you can go straight to JUne's drawings here -

Draw Every Day – June 24

Draw Every Day - June 24 Continuing to draw every day, in book 17 using brush pens and a ...
See photo »

There is a link to the previous month’s Gallery on each page.

The drawings are posted to Threads and Instagram each day.

Whatever It Is

Posted on February 4, 2024 by iansblog

Whatever It Is

Another New Studio

I’ve had a mixed January after time off over Christmas. Lots of time spent trying to get an app from Unity onto the app store, I must have spent twenty hours and it still won’t go on so I’ve resorted to putting the Doncaster Platonics app on the Artivive App.

It works, which is great, but it costs money to use for anything other than minimal output and there would be further charges if the works were viewed more than a 1000 times in a month. That might seem to be a lot of views but the five Platonics drawings are each individual artworks so that’s 200 views each.

Christmas Tree – Oil on Board

While I was at home I painted a Christmas tree, because it was Christmas.

Bird Skeleton

I missed several days studio work after discovering water dripping down onto my stairs from the skylight. This proved to be a hole in the roof so that needed sorting, mostly involving waiting for tradesmen to turn up to quote and then sitting around while the one I chose did the job.

While I was in the roof cavity, off my cellar studio I found the skeleton a small bird, I think it’s a sparrow, and I took it into the studio at c-view to draw. This is 140 cm x 80 cm pencil and pastel on paper. This was started on the 12^th of January.

Small Fox

I also painted a small fox while I was waiting around at home and did a lot of digging in the garden.

Bird Skeleton with Red

On the 15^th January I was able to get into the studio again and added some red to the bird skeleton and worked over the shadows and some marks on the paper with white paint. I managed to get help to deliver the lemniscate to the NHS at Barnsley Hospital and also got some photographs taken of the work I’ve made at c-view for prints and a new website.

Bird Skeleton with red wash

I got back into the studio on the 19^th January and painted the background of the bird skeleton with red ink.

Studio 23/01/2024

I also started a new half sized maquette for the three trees variations in cardboard. I finished this on the 23^rd January and made a lidar Polycam scan.

Three Trees Maquette drawing

When I returned to c-view on the 24^th I started a drawing of the three trees sculpture, I’ve also explored this in the sketchbook.

Three Trees Maquette drawing

And when I next got in on the 29^th I finished it.

Red Pigeon

I was in again on the 31^st, after a lot of work on the app and the background story to the big Gardens Project and I worked the Red Pigeon drawing up to almost finished.

I’m thinking that the Garden is the protagonist of the story for the project, asserting itself by becoming in the presence of ‘you’ as the witness. As simple as it sounds the longer you are present in the garden the more you see and the more you interact the more you find out. The plot may be the reconciliation ‘of’ or ‘with’ a fatal flaw in the main character. There has to be some kind of achievement at the end of it.

I wrote a kind of manifesto for my protagonist. Which garden I am depends upon you. I am the garden growing the fridge freezer and the bin bags full of ignorance; I am the garden organised with gravel and abandoned to dandelions and curly wurly wrappers bleached and wilted; I am the garden clinical in its efficiency, with no room for invasions or unwanted natives, made new every season with garish borders; I am the garden abandoned to ideology, at the mercy of the wind and the moss and the tap roots, and the ‘wilding’; I am the garden that tells you what it wants and where it wants it; You are the garden I am.

I really should find the time to work consistently on this, whatever it is.

A small aside about photographing work, I took the photographs below in my kitchen with the iPad, the picture is 12inches square. I haven’t adjusted the colour in any of them, it is just a question of finding the right light. The one at the right is the closest to reality.

Fox, colour photographs

Drawing

I’ve continued to draw every day;

The January drawings can be seen here

Draw Every Day – January 24

Draw Every Day - January 24 Continuing to draw every day, using sketching pens, japanese ...
See photo »

…and the December images here

Draw Every Day - December 23 Continuing to draw every day, using sketching pens, japanese brush pens, a set of moleskine coloured pencils, a Koh-I-Noor 4B and Derwent watercolour and liquid charcoal washes. I also added a set of Winsor and Newton promarker water soluble markers. The 13th sketchbook was completed on December 12th and a new A5 book started on the 13th. Still doing double page spreads. The drawings are made any time from 9:00 am at the breakfast table and occasionally later in the day if I'm away from home. The drawings have been posted since the beginning, 6th May 2020, on instagram https://www.instagram.com/latham_1959 You can see previous months through the galleries page https://www.ian-latham.com/blog/galleries or you can go straight to November's drawings here -

Draw Every Day – November 23

Draw Every Day - November 23 Continuing to draw every day, using sketching pens, japanese ...
See photo »

There is a link to the previous month’s Gallery on each page.

The drawings are posted to Threads and Instagram each day.

Still in the Red

Posted on November 12, 2023 by iansblog

Still in the Red

Another New Studio

the studio in a convex mirror

Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush?

TS Eliot ‘Burnt Norton’

Despite my best efforts the concerns I had when developing the geranium project remain central to my practice and I feel as if I’m in a dialogue with the inherent nostalgia evoked, in particular, through the Four Quartets

The work I started and discussed in my last post led to me making the space to build a large sculpture based on the three trees maquettes I’ve been making. The sculpture must have spaces inside its mass that are inaccessible to adults because that’s the truth of the actual location (I am working alongside on a VR project that will express this better). In order to clear apples from the garden I need to get on my knees and that act immediately changes my relationship with the earth. I am attached more strongly to the ground, limited in my ability to move and given a different view of things. It’s this feeling I carry in to making and essentially try to replicate in the process. The object is the manner of its making.

The build process

In this case that starts with an external armature to which I can attach shapes based on those that have grown. Each of the stages is followed by a Polycam scan of the sculpture at that stage.

with the armature removed

When I’ve got the basic form I remove the armature and make sure the structure can stand.

with the armature removed

This, if you like, is the outline, and I can then build on this to fill out the form I envisage.

adding form

I used cartridge paper to do this and I’d normally make this more rigid with resin but my current studio arrangements don’t allow for this. It’s always worth noting that the material determines the quality of the form.

adding form

The form, once complete can be painted and in this case it will be red.

First coat of Red

The piece is about seven feet tall and will intially be painted using two shades of red. I’ve managed to put the first one on so far.

First coat of Red

I’ve found time to work on some of the drawings and my sketchbook, this is the third red garden drawing

Red Garden Three

Still not finished.

You’ll have noticed this at the top of the page, try to visit if you can, the other two are really good!

ian-latham.com

Paintings and Sculpture – Drawing – 3d modelling and virtual environments

Tag Archives: Painting

Wool Gathering

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Whatever It Is

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