3 MARCH

This week I remembered a large sketchbook with interesting fern work which I made in 2005, so I opened it and was delighted to find the work just as fresh as I found it at the time. I didn’t take it beyond the sketchbook at the time, but I was up and running with it this week. I photographed the page and imported it into a Procreate document and spent a few very happy hours drawing a fern swaying in the breeze.

The screenshots above are of the work as it progressed, showing the original sketchbook page on a layer beneath the drawing. I thought I might make patterns with it. The process led to me to reflect on collaboration with the past self and how interests remain the same across time and different disciplines. The physical difference is in the materials; this tracing is made digitally and naturally suits a digital market. The original was made entirely by hand. In my graphic design years in the 1990s I worked exclusively digitally, but we didn't have Procreate on iPad and a stylus to make life easy.

Interesting how the original survives with something intact. I can see it is still intrinsically mine. I note how my patience has grown with age, adding a new quality to my work. I am excited for the possibilities this exercise presents, as I may be able to make digital drawings of some of my other work this way, enabling transparent backgrounds for printing on fabric and other materials. I am particularly interested in doing something with my Daily Doodles. 

I will never stop working with pen, ink, gouache, watercolour etc and paper, but I look forward to experimenting and seeing what results from collaboration with the digital realm.
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Thanks for visiting, see you next week!