Making 'Skye Walker'
'SKYE WALKER'
Camping on Skye I am, quite literally, blown away by the place and take loads of photos as I don't have time to draw, in the hope I can turn it into something...!
Back in the studio I am not sure I have anything as this goes against my general principle of only doing what I know well and this was taken from a week's camping. But the mountains and the weather and the overwhelming feel of the place plus my emotional connection to it wouldn't leave me alone so I started doing sketches to see if I could get the feel and flow of the place - see if there was enough 'meat' as it were.
Continuing sketches to extend the idea - like Matisse said 'a drawing is an idea made precise'...
These are try-outs for figures from people I saw on the mountain. I need the figures to convey, from a human scale, how overwhelming the world is...
More development of figures pushing against the steepness and the weather and the psychological immensity of the place...
Now I've got it to a bigger format (this is probably weeks into the project) it looks like it will be a painting - fear stalks me..!
Now I feel all the potential issues are resolved I feel braver and can go on to the painting. It is partly scary because I haven't worked in oil on canvas for a while due to cost! But it is my
preferred medium so I now feel quite excited. When I am working with mixed media on paper including pastels it's a battle. I have to wrestle the materials into doing what I want them to do but with oils it's less a battle than a dance!