I recently went for a wander into the woods on a beautifully crisp autumnal day. Although I took a track which I must have walked hundreds of times before, I decided to try walking through some of the dense bracken to where I could see a small clearing. After shimmying up my socks (tick bites aren’t my favourite thing), and detangling myself from some persistent brambles, I stumbled upon a large oak which had fallen in the high winds some months back.
As I got closer, I was delighted to see that the windfall had creating the most amazing micro climate for a whole host of mushrooms and fungi to thrive. Although I only had my cameraphone to hand, I set about snapping up as many of the textures and shapes as possible.
It was pretty incredible what a vast array of visual feasts lay in such a small area. It kind of felt like I had stumbled into some strange, and wonderful, other-world.
Once back at the studio, I decided to immediately set about documenting this amazing macrocosm in a series of studies. From the photos, I vector scanned, to simplify and bring out the textures, and using the Axidraw A3/V3 I completed a series of plots, stippling the detail of the textures I had found. To keep the detail elegant, I chose to use a Uni Pin 0.03 pen, giving an ultra fine tip and really bringing out the detail of the forms.
At this point I have produced three different pieces, which I have kept as original, one-off artworks. I'm really pleased that 'A Walk In The Woods', (the A3 piece I am holding above) has sold to a really lovely home, where I hope it will be happy!
I think I will continue to create more in this series, from the assets captured during the walk. I really love the way that the prints have created a very abstract representation of the Forms. The two pieces created from puffball mushrooms remind me of particle clouds or something celestial. I'd be interested to further explore this, producing a purely digital particle cloud in After Effects and manipulating into an animation. Thats for another day though, and a different cup of coffee...