Ashdown Forest IV, final stage

26 July 2010

Finally, a dark layer just at the top of the image creates the tree trunks.



Light through trees, Ashdown Forest. Linocut, 10x10cm.

I think that the effect of light coming through the trees just about works. The colours are a bit confused; the red was meant to be bracken, but the warm of that colour brings the area behind the trees too far forward. And while I like the fairly loose cutting in the grass area, there are too many "seagulls", marks where I've repeated the same action with the cutting tool: in, twist to the right, twist back, and lift.


In "What Painting Is", James Elkins talks about how easy it is to keep repeating the same marks. One of his students tries to copy a Monet painting:
"... the key to the method, turned out to be the exact gestures that made the individual brushmarks. When we compared them, one of hers to one of his, we always found that his were more pointed and creviced, more wildly asymmetric... brilliant, fragmented, and dishevelled... The state of mind that can produce those unexpected marks is one divided against itself; part wants to make harmonious repetitive easy marks, and the other wants to be unpredictable."