Following on from looking at Edward Hoppers work I took some photo’s of the outside of my house in different lights to see how this changed the feel of looking into the house through windows or doors.

I then used these photo’s to make black and white back pen drawings of elements of the house that I thought could be drawn together to create a design for the lino print. I wanted to keep these black and white so I could think about shapes/lines before thinking about colour schemes for any prints.

 

In the drawing above I focused on the gate leading to my front door, the photo was taken around mid day so quite a large shadow was being cast on the ground by the gate. I was interested in the negative space or shadow created rather than capturing the exact form of the white gate. It looks slightly creepy in black and white but I’m happy with the overall line/shape of it.

I really wanted to capture or make a feature of the unusual shape of the door frame against the brick work, so I kept the brick black and the majority of the frame white which gives a nice contrast. Taking the photo at mid-day meant that you could see the window at the back of our kitchen through the open door way even though there was a shadow. I liked that and although it looks more mysterious in black and white I feel adding in the window in white helps it seems a bit less like you’re entering a dark unknown house.

The drawing in the photo above is based on the window of my computer room, I wanted to try and simply capture the movement of the net curtains that you can see from outside. I think that’s pretty clear, maybe a little to simple, but not sure what to do to improve.

 

With the window above I was interested by the shadows created by the net curtains and the edges of the window not trying to capture the whole thing perfectly. I’m a little concerned the top shadow looks like drips but we’ll see.

In the drawing above I wanted to try and capture some of (or at least hint to) the objects on the window sill being visible from the outside. Again I wasn’t too interested in creating lots of detail more the shape/outline as these would come across quite clearly in a lino print. I think it works fairly well.

The photos in the sketchbook pages above were taken around twilight so the light outside the house was dim. This allowed me to turn on the lights inside the house and take photo’s which showed a different side to viewing the house. It makes a big difference to be able to see into the house as to how inviting it feels. It instantly feels less hidden and restrictive.

The photo’s above were interesting angles of looking at the house. I was drawn to the light on the outside of the house and the way the light spread out from it. As you can see I moved on before doing any drawing as I wasn’t too sure how to approach it but I think I’ll come back to it as it could be interesting to see that outside light detached from the house and in a jumbled lino print.

The photo’s above were also taken at twilight and again it cast a very different feeling over looking into the house from the outside. Even though the door is closed, having the light on and the light being a orange/warm light it seems more inviting than the open door in the colder light of day.

Alternative lino cutting design:

 Having taken some photos around the time of twilight of the outside of the house I began to think about approaching the mono print and lino print differently.

My original thought had been to create texture revealing circles by mono printing methods and to add quite randomly arranged linocut elements of the house (e.g. a window, door, light) on top of the mono print.  But it occurred to me looking at the photo’s that a better way to display the look of the house in twilight could be by painting directly onto the printing plate and creating a mono print of it that way to go on top of lino cut circles.

Perhaps this is a little crazy but I wanted to see if it would work so painted a water colour design in a universal blue to then use as a basis for a preparing a lino block for cutting. See photo below:

I then set about cutting the lino to the design. However you’ll notice a slight change in design as a semi broken boarder surrounds the circles, this was something that seemed like a good idea to try in the first print, and can easily be cut away if it looks awful! See photo below for image of lino cut and coloured with a sharpie to show me how it might look with ink on…

Next steps are to carry out a test lino print and come up with a plan for painting directly onto the printing plate for my mono print layer…