Something I had to try in the scanner was this old glove . . . . the softest softest kid, faded and grubby, it seemed perfect. First try with it as a Photoshop brush/stamp was nothing special but I was sure it ought to work so I kept going. Put a brush of an old sheet of watercolour paper with a raggedy edge underneath and then printed it out onto card. Just following blind really, gingerly feeling my way to the next step but not able to see any further than just that next step. This is good, an exercise in trust . . . . usually I try and pin everything down to the nth degree.
Sewing into the paper with a dull yellow thread, hugely satisfying but then hand sewing always soothes my soul.
Now I had something else . . . .beginning to get some kind of a feeling about this . . . . scanned that in
Now it's another brush/stamp and I've layered it up a bit and echoed the yellow of the thread I used. So far ,so good . . . . .
Now we're getting somewhere . . . . deconstructing the larger piece and relayering. Putting conscious control aside . . . . .allowing the story to tell itself . . . . something about domesticity . . . . .it has a kind of Georgian feel to it . . . thinking of the painstaking restoration of old houses where layers of history can be seen in the flaking faded paint and the weight of peoples lives hang in the air. It is often the small everyday things that remain, a child's toy, a lady's comb, a piece of lace, that are the most poignant. This was what emerged, slowly and almost incidentally while I was working.
Then a further deconstruction . . . . taking sections of the glove to re-lay them onto a new ( digital ) surface. I'm not sure I wouldn't print those pieces out seperately and sew them onto watercolour paper and then scan that back in. A very different way of working for me . . . slower, more absorbing but infinitely satisfying. To be continued . . . . .
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