In Black and White

From the studio – another note on process:

Recently I have been taking both coloured and black and white snapshots of works in progress and looking at them together. This is proving to be a useful tool in my work process.

It came about as a result of looking through an old book on Fauvism and discovering that many of the plates were in black and white.  Whilst I understand that colour reprodution of printed images is more expensive than black and white, I found this especially curious (and downright frustrating!) in this particular book since it was on Fauvism, which is essentially about colour.  But on closer inspection I began to see things in the works I had otherwise missed.

As part of my process now I experiment on reducing colour in new works in progress by taking black and white shots or turning on the greyscale in a photo editor. When the ‘distraction’ of colour is eliminated from the image I find it allows for a fresh view of composition, the movement in the image and what the colour contribution is in terms of weight and shape; different balances and rhythms emerge which can help in the development of the images.

Have a look:

This is a quick snapshot of a recently completed collage work on canvas called ‘Landscape of the Fauves’:

This work is still very much in progress and will change before it’s fixed: