Searching for a View

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While digging through a box of old papers I found these quick 9x12-inch acrylic sketches I did while following along with a video by British artist Lewis Noble . (Sorry, couldn't locate the exact tutorial but the inspiring mix of calmness and energy Noble exhibits while painting make any of his abstract landscape videos worth a watch.)

As always, when I come across old work, I can't wait to chop it up! 

Using a 10x10-cm viewfinder I hunted for interesting compositions. Then, before chopping, had the foresight to make colour copies so I could play around with a number of views.

But the yellow ink seemed to have jammed (I have nothing but headaches with my new printer -- and it can't all be operator error!)

Still, with the absence of any yellow pigment, I got some amazing colours -- those pinky-blue mauves! In fact, think I prefer the monotone images to the original. (Originals have yellow -- copies have pink.) With lots of photocopies in hand I could freely experiment with cropping. 

Slightly lower horizon or higher, as in the photo below:

Or half-an-inch this way or that:

Don't think the leaf-shaped break in the cloud looks good pushed hard to the left. Middle image is okay but like the one on the right the best. Multiple copies to chop up makes playing around with all these slight variations in compositions and views possible.

Here are two vertical images:

Initially preferred the one on the left but there's something drawing me to that lighter purple monolithic shape on the right. I see mountains and massive rock. Below are three almost identical images but cropped at different angles. Once I stopped using the viewfinder in a strict north-to-south orientation a whole world of new compositions opened up.

It was a challenge to crop an image I liked in the painting with with the big grey smear on the left but I like this one:

Since I was on a roll and hadn't run out of enthusiasm I went to run off a few more photocopies. Gave the yellow ink a bit of a jiggle and -- darn -- it started to work. Sort of... I got yellow but the colours are not at all close to the original paintings. Almost as if the printer was not yet getting enough of the pigment. To my eye the green and yellow are dull and insipid compared with the original on the right.

Even these dull copies, though, made good fodder for the big chop!

Above are two horizontal compositions. The bottom one is pulled a bit to the right to bring in that lower corner of white. In the photo below, I compared a horizontal layout to the vertical.

Here's a square version:

Interestingly, I found playing around with the least favourite of the three sketches the most freeing. Perhaps I had less emotional involvement and looked for compositions with a more unbiased eye? Or maybe there was less to lose since I didn't feel attached to the original image?

Anyway, at the end of the day, there was a nice stack of "potential" piled on my work table. And there was also a huge amount of off-cuts (second photo) that hadn't offered up any crops of interest.

But they provided tantalizing scraps of colour and texture:

I'll be playing around with these for sure and if anything comes of it, I'll let you know. See you soon!