Experiment | Kate McCalmont-Woods

I’m conscious that I committed to doing an automatic drawing a day to try and change my mindset. I’m allowing myself the inclusion of exploring Procreate as well!

I particularly like the charcoal drawing. I used a piece of compressed charcoal and made swirling marks using it on its narrow edge and full on its side. I then rubbed it out and repeated it but this time playing around with the end and varying the motions. The concept of layers appeals to me (memories, past lives/ identities…) particularly the traces left behind of the first drawing and I was surprised by the range of marks I made depending on how I held the charcoal and the pressure I used. There are some delicate areas, followed by some jagged, harsh marks. Some lines appear to be faltering and hesitant whilst others have more purpose and at times are almost punctuation marks in what would otherwise be a stream of unconsciousness.

The second image I am treating as an automatic pastel drawing – I randomly chose colours and effects from the Procreate menu and I think the result is interesting, although I miss the haptics and the smell of the real thing as well as the tactile relationship between the medium and support. I’m not sure that I would use it going forward, except maybe as a tool to experiment with, although I have previously decreed that collage is just not my bag – how times change! I might use it if I decided to go down a graphic flat colour route (as in the third image) and digital collage is something I will definitely explore further – no bits on the floor and no need to glue – what’s not to like? I’ve been thinking about how I could incorporate digital collage into a mixed media piece of work – perhaps a giclée print onto a canvas, sealed with medium and then oil paint?

There are lots of thoughts chasing themselves around my head – I’ve been ignoring them in the hope that as and when I consciously acknowledge them they may have already got themselves into some kind of order. Just doing what I’m doing at the moment seems to be creating even more possibilities and permutations which is exciting.

I can sense that I’m feeling a lot more relaxed about making my experimental work ‘public’. I really look forward to starting the day by just letting my hand wander across the page – it’s the only time when there’s no expectation on me to achieve anything – renewing the buildings insurance, fixing the E20 error message on the washing machine – just a moment when I’m at one…

Last week’s task was to try something different in our artistic practice: something which might not work out.

I’ve been thinking about trying digital art for a while. I like the feel of a paintbrush or piece of charcoal in my hand and so a foray into the world of an Apple Pencil and a flat screen would seem to lack the tactile nature of applying paint to a canvas or smudging and blending charcoal with my fingers. It is, as expected sadly lacking, although Procreate, the app I used, has a wide range of effects and tricks, it’s not at all the same.

I’m not the most technically minded person, so I had to watch numerous YouTube videos and even then with my current inability to retain information, I decided that the best way to learn is to get stuck in. It took me ages just get to grips with the basics!

I discovered that one area in which using Procreate might be of use is in collage. Instead of cutting out images and assembling them, I created several different layers of images which I first isolated from their backgrounds. It was much easier to move them around than using physical pieces and the ability to use my own photographic images and images from websites such as Pexels, means that there won’t be any issues in terms of copyright, something of which I’ve always been mindful.

This is the result:

I’m quite pleased with it as a first attempt and I can see that there is a lot of potential in producing digital collages. I found the process quite frustrating at times, but that was mainly due to my incompetence and this will improve with practice, hopefully. Next time I will take a bit more care in selecting my images; I don’t think the cactus in the foreground works particularly well, but I just needed something to detract from the lack of clarity in the tree roots. I used the paintbrush option to put in a shadow under the skull, but the shadow of the figure doesn’t work at all – I was unable to alter it as I had merged several layers together by that stage. Going forward, I think I need to give more thought to the interaction of the layers and also, to save time, it would be a good idea to start to create a collection of images rather than searching through photos and websites on the hoof.