I've spent much time recently playing with the fourth starter image I previously posted here. After much consideration - minipulating colours and opacity and adding, duplicating, moving and removing layers (it was a long process), I've ended up with this.
At least, I think this could be a finishing point and a piece ready for stitching but I will need a time away from it to view it impartially before I can be sure. I find a time interval very helpful. Things need to settle in my mind before I can view things objectively, especially when they are as visually complex as this one.
My main concern with it, as so often with my work, is the complexity of the image and the question of whether there is actually space for stitching and whether it will add anything or merely increase the sense of visual business. Printing out onto proofing paper will help as images often looks very different when the intense light and glimmer of the computer screen has gone. On the other hand, sometimes stitching in a fairly muted and harmonious colour can help to 'knock back' an image and unify it. Some experimentation will be needed!
This image has been built up over some time, with the various elements being added as the mood has taken me, so of course, it's always possible I may yet start again from scratch adding the elements one by one and see where it gets me. As each small element is added on a separate layer, I am able do this and it may help me solve the complexity problem if I feel I need to.
The use of digital photo manipulation software sure throws up its own challenges!
One of the most difficult aspects of design, especially digital design, I have found is imagining the stitching to come, and leaving the possibilities there. It is so easy to fall into the habit of taking the design as far as possible visually on screen - and then finding that hand work then does not fit.
ReplyDeleteI also admire you for taking on work with such a fixed theme. I am useless at that kind of thing. I always overthink and contrive ideas and find myself well outside my comfort zone - and of course come up with an inadequate result. I do not have your ease with such projects, so good luck with it.
As so often, your comments hit the button! This has given me much to think about – hence my delay in replying.
DeleteYou describe exactly my temptation with digital design. I find it mesmerising and it is all too easy to go on and on producing endless changes and complexities, each saved in a separate file, just because I can. I decided it might be useful to use this as an experiment and to stop at this point and see if stitch could be profitable or not. So far, I’ve been surprised by the result. Although the initial design is very complex and busy, hand stitch is appearing to calm things down and produce some interesting subtleties. Next I will have to decide when to stop with the stitching! Even then, I may well not exhibit the piece as is. It may sit in my ‘put it down to experience box’ or even await its fate with scissors and a life in pieces!
You mention what you describe as my ease with projects with such an imposed theme. As time has passed, I’ve found it easier to approach such a topic by asking myself what I can bring to the theme from previous work, rather than what it seems to expect of me. However, I will confess that I still find the demands difficult and restricting. I would love to have the opportunity to set my own agenda for a prolonged period and to explore approaches fully before I feel the push to move on. However, membership of such a group gives me opportunities for exhibiting that would not otherwise come my way and it makes me explore new approaches so I persevere.
This time, however, I found it particularly hard to imagine how I could create something I felt happy with and which allowed me to remain true to myself. I spent hours playing and designing before I could come up with anything I felt might have a future until, eventually, I found a couple of photos in the Museum’s archives which seemed to offer me possibilities. The one used here featured back to back houses with rows of washing in their front gardens and great perspective from large chimneys. I then felt I had somewhere I could go – but I will need a huge clear out of my Photoshop files once it’s all over!
What are you trying to say? Perhaps unfairly, this was the thought that came to mind as I studied this image in light of its backstory/inspiration/exhibit it will be a part of.
ReplyDeleteUnfair, because your creativity should not be restricted by what a viewer might be puzzling over, trying to work out the connection to the source inspiration. We viewers do that, you know! This leaves me with a very oppressive feeling, almost claustrophobic, leaving a sense of what it might have been like to live in these dense workers' quarters in a time when smoke filled the air and no one thought that odd.
Also unfair because, you needn't be trying to say anything. And when you add stitch, it may change everything.
You ask a very fair question. To answer you, I think that this piece was first of all a technical experiment. I was using my usual digital package to play with the imagery I had already created and exploring where it would lead visually, if anywhere. Principally, I was layering over and over again and moving the layers around to see what effects resulted. This post and the comment to Olga above were chiefly about this process and how far I could take it, especially in the context of an imposed theme. I was considering most of all the problem of overworking things – which is so easily done with Photoshop since the whole process is so quick once you've generated the imagery. As I said to Olga, the piece may lead nowhere in terms of the exhibition. Time will tell.
DeleteHowever, as is usually the case with my work these days, there is certainly a back story to the piece and in this case a wish to make some sort of social comment on the lives of the people at the time. The chimneys and the washing lines were the main focus of this, suggesting the drudgery of life in a tiny house with no heating in winter except an open fire and with none of our modern appliances to make life easier.
I'm interested that you are left with an oppressive feeling as that was certainly in my mind initially. However, I sense that one of the problems with the piece is that the colours I've used are too cheerful and don't reflect this reality. In fact that is true of the whole body of work so far I think. The back story has become rather drowned out by the wish to give visual pleasure, particularly in some of the images. However, I will certainly stick with what I’ve done so far (if not with this piece) but am now considering where to take things next to reflect these thoughts.