In all the years I’ve lived in Bristol, I’ve never visited these gardens before.  Thankfully the weather gods were kind and we had a lovely sunny day.

I left my digital camera at home, deciding to take my 35mm slr and new acquisition that has been languishing in my mother in law’s loft, an Ensign e20 pocket camera.  We have no idea if the bellows are still lightfast so it is going to be interesting to see if any images weere taken.  Another challenge with this camera is that I had to get used to the view finder, and then remembering to wind the image on.  So out of eight frames I’m definitely going to have a few that are happy accidents as we say.   I now need to find a dark room to develop them.

With the 35mm film, I stick to using black and white, I’ve also been challenging myself by using it on manual mode.  Again, I need to get the film developed.

My phone camera, I used as I would a dslr and played around with exposure, focus etc in the professional mode.  I did fins it a little restrictive in how the settings wanted to still automatically interact and change each other  – but maybe I need to investigate it further as I am probably missing something really simple.

Drawings…..

Flowers….

Mirror maze…

Pond…..

Wood structure…

Prism…..

These are some of the images I took in professional mode on my phone camera. I have to develop my slr 35mm images and the medium format ones. Once I’ve got those I will add them to a seperate blog post. I think it will be interesting to see how they’ve turned out.

I’m drawn to light, textures and contrasts. This is evident from the kind of images I take. I think I need to finetune that a little. I use photoshop to overlay images and use the textures to create interesting backgrounds and patterns. How can I utilise this to help portray the horse? Tell the story of what I see, and the personality of the equine model I am using either in a commission or a one-off personal piece? Experimentation is the only way forward.

My first impression this year is that there are a lot of print creations in various forms. I’m inspired to understand a bit more about the various techniques as I would like to turn my photographs into etchings, how do I do that? can it be done in a less toxic way to the enviroment? Are there natural inks I can make that will work with screen printing and linocuts?

The following watercolour is probably the only image that I actually went “wow” I love the colours, I love the details held in the image, it’s softness and vibrancy at the same time. If I could paint watercolours like this I would be extremely pleased. It has the detail and realism, but abstract feel I like, and would like to emulate in my own works.

I also like this little pot, because I came across a video on one of the social media platforms that showed someone using the technique of using horsehair to create the pattern in the glaze in an electric kiln, rather than raku firing. Not sure I would be able to do this at University as you have to interrupt the firing and then put the hair on whilst it’s still warm.

I was a little underwhelmed with some of the work in the RWA, not sure why. I’m wondering if it’s because I’m looking for that special something but I don’t really know what that something is?

Sometimes what we are looking for is right under our nose and we don’t even realise it, I hope that’s the case with me. I hope that I can go back and review the photos I took and see someting I didn’t really notice before.

We had a brief introduction to the module, outcomes and dates.  This year is really get all the experimentation done before Christmas so the techniques and outcomes are refined enough to produce good quality work.

So what am I concentrating on and where am I going?

Thankfully I have more of an idea than this time last year.  My inspiration is still horses, they are such a part of my own story, I want to try and share their grace and beauty and gentleness in my art.

My  style is pretty loose, I don’t want to create carbon copies of my reference images, I want my references to give me a place to start not be the place I finish.

This year I want to improve my techniques and experiment with printing techniques and photography development.  I also want to concentrate on using a limited pallet, that utilises natural pigments and make my own paints. 

How do I link the looseness of my painting style through to everything else?  The softness and kind of abstract essay with the hint of something realistic…..

I need to do more painting and get samples of what I do out there if I want my art to be seen.