Chapter 1: Choose a wall to study and Chapter 2: Record your observations

There are lots and lots of walls where I live. Houses, vineyards with drystone walls in every state of repair and disrepair, abandoned and almost abandoned walls with graffiti … I have always been fascinated by the variety of stones that have been used in building all these walls.

So I went out and took photographs of whatever piece of wall captured my attention, took rubbings as well and decided to sort them out at home. I was so overwhelmed by all the visual input that I felt unable to decide while I was collecting. The tendency however was toward vineyard walls.
After this I spent time getting acquainted with Picasa, working on my photographs and scans. And then: my sketchbook.



Once I opened the empty book I found it extremely difficult to make the first mark – another case of the “blank page fright”, I suppose.



When in doubt, paste something in. As long as you do anything at all …

Page 1-2: The photograph and the black and white print should be seen sideways, but they don’t quite fit on the page. I like this piece of wall for the horizontal and vertical layering of the stones and the dramatic colours. I overdid the colours a little on Picasa while playing around, so I printed a copy to get a contrasting view. Although this is not my final choice of wall I want to keep it in mind for further study.

Page 2a-2b: This is the rubbing I took from this piece of wall, taken in conté pastel:



Page 3 – 4/4a: Another stone I could not pass by, with a drawing in conté pastels done on my walk and the spark of an idea to try out in textiles, drawn in ink and water soluble pencils.

  

At first I thought the format of the sketchbook suggested in the module a little too small. On the other hand ideas and small jottings do not feel so lost as on a bigger page and seem more to spill over and carry me on to the next page. So I decided to make extensions if necessary by adding a sheet to the page with masking tape. Thus the a’s and b’s etc.

Pages 7 and 8: The last diversion for now

           

Page 9: I chose this piece of wall for further study in the module:

                

It is also an old drystone wall in the vineyards. I like the contrasting sizes of the stones and the variety of shapes, the negative spaces between the stones and, of course, the colours.


I will continue to show my work on Chapter Two in my next post.



Working on the first pages of my sketchbook I found that organizing the material in this way helped me to get a clearer picture of what might be useful for the module and what to put aside for other projects - decisions that have always been difficult for me. That was a surprising and satisfactory experience.