For this image, which ended up being entitled “you lead me by the still waters”, I approached it in a new way.
O Lord you lead me by still waters
The texture development in this piece and related pieces has come through my doing the ‘drawing in church’ work. Some of this started to become something of a meditation as I fiddled around with various textures and ideas.
I realised one thing about the details was that as you looked at one point of the picture, you no longer could see the whole picture. But when you saw the whole picture, your eye is attracted by the detail of another area. Its the same with any landscape, there is a constant shift in viewpoint as your eye is attracted by different points, and you try to make reference to it all.
The next difference is the original place. I’ve been working with just a fountain pen (£1 from Sainsbury’s!) and drawing pad for quite a while now, the idea being to just draw accurately and quickly, without all that rubbing out. It’s a great discipline, and there is more art in it that trying to reproduce a photographic image.
So with this, and the other images, I drew quickly on site, just grabbing what I needed in 5-10mins. Later i worked the picture up to determine the main forms, and be sure that it would make a good overall picture. I didn’t work too hard at it, and certainly didn’t add the detail of the trees.
When it came to the actual picture, in pen and acrylic ink, I only put the rough pencil forms in, then shut the sketch pad, and got on with it.
Let me know what you think.
(original is available as a handsigned limited edition print if you are interested)
