01 October 2008

Inspiration, or jumping off point?

The two pix on my wall at work are inspirations - Malevich's village scene and Klimt's birch forest. Have I used them as jumping off points though? Not yet... so, how could I do this?

Malevich uses red, blue, black, rich brown, sandy brown, mudy brown, grey, and golden yellow. Oh and a bit of blue-green. Actually that grey has lots of nuances. At first the colours look to be few and the shapes simple - triangles, mostly, shaded with the colours. Solid puffs, also shaded, of smoke rising from the chimneys. When I sit down to draw from this, something will happen on my paper that will set my design going - the jumping off point. I keep looking at the yellow hat and the way the red areas march across the picture - maybe that will be the jumping off point. Or maybe it will be the arcs of black. I won't know till I do the work for myself, making the spark from the tinder.

The Klimt is grey and brown, with flecks of orange. There's a high horizon, a late-afternoon sky in a fall landscape of many thin trunks. Nothing is happening in this picture. It's like that old conundrum of "if a tree falls in the forest and no-one is there to hear it, does it make a noise?". It's very satisfying to look at - just like being there in the forest in the silence in the light with the smell of decaying leaves that will refresh the soil. Again, looking and drawing is the way forward. For this, I'd want to convey the atmosphere, whereas for the Malevich there might be some sort of story involved.

I've been looking at these -- glancing -- for about a year now.

1 comment:

Linda B. said...

I know that Klimt is known for his women and his gold work but his landscapes, and the beech tree studies are my favourites