Altered Photographs

On Wednesday I spent an enjoyable day at  Art Van Go  on a course led by  Vanda Campbell. The course promised to 'show you how to work directly on photographs to create exciting new images'. 

I was inspired by the techniques to create new images but early in the day, when I worked into this sliver of a photograph, I realised how these techniques would allow me to simplify my landscape images and potentially inspire new work. The colours need refinement but I think it has potential.

This field is a picture of two halves. The left hand side of the photograph was left untouched and I have worked into the right hand side. On the left I see lots of stems of plants and trees and on the right hand side I see a series of colours and which could be  used to inspire fabric printing. It wouldn't be easy but it would be possible.

 

This artichoke picture was cut in half and one half of the image was turned upside down. The aim was to make the two halves appear as a single image again. Unfortunately, it just seemed to call for me to redraw the part of the artichoke that I'd cut-off! But the process made me look more closely at the artichoke and I was pleased how the bottom part linked across the two sides of the image.

The left hand side of this image was one of my tulip fields and the right hand half was one of Gill's landscape photographs.  Again the aim was to work into the photographs in order creating a coherent single image. 

This tulip field was over painted with emulsion and worked into with water colour pencils whilst still wet. I was really pleased with how this simplified the photograph and into something that seems a bit more 'manageable'.

 

I've been looking forward to going back to my theme of landscapes and I think these techniques will give me some useful tools which in turn will inspire a piece of textile work. I fancy taking (say) 5 copies of the same image and work into them using different techniques and seeing where that takes me. If anyone has other techniques for simplifying or abstracting landscapes I'd love to hear about them.