I was interested to see Jo Love’s remediation of old black and white photos using metallic pencils, in our session a couple of weeks ago. Photographic images quite often form the basis of my work. I decided to experiment with gold and silver pencils on some old unsuccessful cyanotypes I made from the video stills in In A Flash. The results were varied.

I used the silver pencil first but thought that it didn’t stand out enough. On reflection I think there is a subtlety about it which I like, and perhaps it would have been a better choice than the gold.

I’m not particularly drawn to any of them, but if I had to make a choice I prefer the last two images, particularly the last one. What works for me are the marks outside of the original image, the sunlike shape on the left and the drifting cloud on the top right. The overdrawing creates an image within an image, something which always appeals to me. I think part of the problem is the fact that the images are on watercolour paper which wasn’t overly receptive of the pencil. Overdrawing does appeal to me as a concept, though.