Poetic Woods E-Book

Ann Blockley

• Herausgeber: Batsford
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 84

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Innovative techniques in painting woodlands from renowned artist Ann Blockley. Watercolourist Ann Blockley is known for her striking and intriguing paintings of natural landscapes. In this beautiful guide she explores woodlands in a variety of interpretations, from tangled groves and ancient trees to fiery leaves and springtime orchards. With simple instructions and easy-to-follow demonstrations throughout, the book draws inspiration from forest poetry, birdsong and folklore. There's practical advice on working outside, experimenting with mixing colours (especially greens), playing with water effects, using salt and granulation, mark-making and spattering with found objects such as leaves and twigs, creating texture with gesso and working with collage. Other techniques include working with oak gall ink and charcoal, and how to incorporate words, text and photo transfer. The book is illustrated throughout with stunning examples of Blockley's colourful, expressive work, including a case study of her own woodland garden. Also showcased are works by fellow artists from The Arborealist group, the Royal Institute, and the Pastel Society to inspire you further. Pushing the boundaries of watercolour and other mixed media, this delightful wander through the woods is the ideal companion for both beginners and the more experienced landscape painter who wishes to take their painting to the next level.

Leseprobe

Poetic Woods

Poetic Woods

Experimental Watercolour and Collage

Ann Blockley

Contents

Introduction

Creativity through trees

Poetic painting

Woodland mark-making

Messy beginnings

Dribbles

Getting into the flow

Water spray

Salt

Granulation

Spatter and scrape

Choosing colour

White gesso

Foliage ideas

Found materials

Nature printing

Collage

Accidental mark-making

Poetic collage

Storytelling

Collage layers

Stitch and fabric in collage

Combining words and image

Disguised or altered words

Re-assembling an image

Woodland sketching

Mindful sketching

Using photographs for reference and collage

Manipulating photographs

Poetic interpretations

Through the seasons: a personal project

Spring

Summer

Autumn

Winter

Afterword

Index

By the Light of the Silvery Birch

Introduction

In Poetic Woods I explore ways of using watercolour and collage to create lyrical and atmospheric interpretations of our woodlands. I start with practical information about making marks that seem especially appropriate for capturing aspects of woods and trees. These tools and tips are there to help you pursue your own versions of these subjects, together with examples of my own in the section called Poetic Interpretations (see page 69), to inspire you and give further advice. The final chapter, Through the Seasons: A Personal Project, is based on my own woodland garden and is intended to stimulate you to recognize and develop your unique interests and voice.

I strongly feel that true learning is best achieved through personal experimentation, trial and error, failure and success. A guiding hand from someone with experience is useful in terms of tried-and-tested techniques and tips, but how you apply these and develop them into creative expression only progresses through practice and play. This book sets about encouraging you to do this using examples and ideas to kindle and spark your imagination. This is not a book about how to paint a tree. It is more of a woodland celebration inviting you to enter an alternate reality and paint in a poetic way or write in a painterly way. Let us turn the world upside down and stand the pond trees on their heads. Let us slip into a leafy dreamworld and join Puck, Cobweb and Titania. Let us be green outlaws, defying rules and flouting convention like Robin Hood. Let us shake off our comfortable spaces and joust with thorns and nettles. Life is not always well in the woods and the challenges of being creative echo the different faces of nature, both cruel and kind. Let’s enter with an open mind to forage for ideas.

Creativity through trees

My painting life constantly evolves, and it has been a natural and instinctive progression for me to move towards tree subjects, as if I am going back to my roots. When I was born, my father had a house built at the edge of a wood on Beechwood Lane. My childhood was spent playing among the beech, oak, rhododendrons and horse chestnut trees. I now have a house with a magical, wild-wooded garden. It feels like living within a folkloric fairy tale and that I am still breathing my childish dreams. I would love to think that by sharing them with you it might inspire you to express your own fantastical ideas. Woodlands are inspirational places and I think most of us feel a strong connection with these primeval sites. Underground, in the hidden mystical world of the forest, roots and fungi connect and spread, helping each other in ways that we can only begin to understand. Earth is full of wonder, so let us celebrate it through art in the kaleidoscope kingdom of the trees.

In my book Creativity Through Nature, I explored how reconnecting with the natural world might help negotiate a way out of artist’s block. During this nature pilgrimage, I had fun with re-wilding experiments, including how to use more sustainably sourced art materials. Refreshed and stimulated by these explorations, I assessed the findings. My conclusion was to reduce what I purchase where possible and only use fancy ‘products’ when deemed necessary to their creative purpose. I continue to use water-based mediums, such as watercolour, ink and gouache, which feel like they have a close affinity with trees and nature. I also concluded that collage is a useful way forward from an ecological perspective. The only essential bought product is glue – almost everything else can be gleaned from recycled materials, including elements from discarded paintings. It is a satisfying way to create new-style, contemporary watercolours, where further layering and improvements are easily possible.

Collages are visual poems where you can superimpose veils of surface and image. Snippets that remind you of an elusive reality are woven together in ensembles that can be childish, quirky, romantic or even nightmarish. They are like dreams in which messages dissolve and fuse in extraordinary ways. When I visit woods to paint, I often find it hard to settle in front of a single view and trap it in a rectangle. All the surrounding sights, sounds, smells and previous memories build a bigger picture. Using collage is a poetic way to mirror this amalgamation of experiences. It can blur and fragment images just as atmospheric watercolour can be enigmatic, with its melting edges and expressive textures. Both artforms use mark-making as simile to represent subject and this book explores these two genres.

Poetic painting

Finding a title for a book to summarize its unique emphasis is something I always consider carefully. This time, I looked for a word that I felt described my style of artwork and came up with ‘poetic’. This led me to question what gives a painting that particular quality. What kind of marks and interpretations might we choose to create a visual poem? In the context of writing I have mainly confined myself to prose, which seems more ordinary, using everyday language with conventional grammar – like these sentences and paragraphs. I think of poems as being symbolic, imaginative, emotional forms of expression. I compared this to the way that paintings range from detailed representation (a kind of visual prose), to spontaneous abstract expressionism and every variation in between. I realized that the boundaries between all mediums and genres are blurred. Writing can flow between prose and poem, and veer from formal structures to more abstract. It was time to explore how both my writing and painting could become more poetic by letting go of limiting beliefs.

‘The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.’James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)

My dream is to write poems, although I am terrified of appearing silly or banal. If I am afraid of being judged, it may not seem logical to include fledgling poetry here! My reason for doing so is clear – I want to set an example about ‘having a go’, taking risks, doing something new that may be difficult. As I progress through the dwindling time we have, I want to continue taking on challenges, not with the sole aim of being ‘good’, but to enjoy the pleasure of trying. Once I had got over the self-doubt that I felt on reading ‘proper’ poets – Dylan Thomas, Ted Hughes, James Joyce – I reminded myself to just enjoy it. On this basis, I have scattered my own verses throughout the book, to echo the sense of childlike wonder in the magic of nature that I aim for in my paintings. I hope that this example and my practical tips for using poetic licence will help you to create your own lyrical interpretations of the woods and all that lies within.

Beyond the Old Iron Gate

Watercolour and ink on paper.

Welcome to the Forest

Welcome to the forest,

but only enter if you dare

to face your childish fears,

and play without a care.

There will be threat and danger

within these wildwood tangles,

where all the brambles scratch,

and the woven ivy strangles.

Creative paths do wane and wax.

Doubt hides behind each tree.

But as each cycle starts again,

hope lies in bud and bee.

So make your brush a magic wand.

Let ink become a mystic spell,

to paint each leaf and verdant frond,

and capture sounds and smell.

Enter this tinted paper glade.

Push aside the rustic gate.

Walk into your woodland dream –

See what wonders lie in wait.

The Distant Woods Are Singing

Watercolour, gouache, liquid charcoal, crayon and collage.

Woodland mark-making

Poetic Woods is a book about making woodland-inspired marks, textures, patterns and shapes. Watercolour and water-based mediums or collage are used in ways that evoke a mood or atmosphere to remind you of something seen in the woods, or perhaps dreamed or imagined. These are marks that suggest and celebrate in a poetic way the potent tangible sights, as well as the less easily defined emotions created or discovered through an immersion in the forest environment or a connection with trees. Through scrape and dribble, blotting and distressing, we will let paint reflect the flow of nature. We shall explore and experiment with ways that connect to the life force of trees, the variety and relentless cycle of decay and regeneration. Peeling back and building up the layers of our imagination, we use collage to encompass ideas that tell stories and visual poems in an organic, tactile, inventive style that can juxtapose and superimpose different dialects.

From a practical point of view, we will look at ideas for painterly, impressionistic methods to represent branches, twigs, leaves, bark, groups of trees, distant wooded landscapes, forest floor, foliage colour and other abundant delights. The watercolour techniques can be used to create complete paintings or pieces for inclusion in collage work. We will sketch using different tactics and a variety of tools, including photography.

Messy watercolour washes.