Work diary: Second piece

Mon 20 August - abstract composition Pingyaou

This is also the case with the second piece I am working on alongside this one, of some waitresses from Pingyaou. They are not dancing, but there is such movement and animation, it is as if they are waiting to dance! How strange that in all my litho images so far, there is dancing.

It is quite a long process to develop these two for me. They sit on my wall and I look at them, do a bit, and then put them back. I then start to work in gently, or sometimes not so gently, to get the movement and light in a bit.

The way in which I have used the strokes of the light is something I want to hold in there, and want it to remain an abstract composition which suggests the subject rather than a detailed rendering of the scene, I want the instant to be captured but still have movement in it.

I have finally got to the stage where I am photographing them and then looking at how I develop them on the computer. Then I will return to the wall, and continue to work by hand on the piece. It helps so much to be able to try something quickly, although they are all hand drawn, rather than work them up on the computer, I can just test the idea for colour expecially, so that when I work I can get it right – I am constantly aware that time is running out here… only two weeks left, with quite a bit of the last few days being taken up by organising the editions, it will soon go! I plan to have my Beverley dancers and Pingyaou girls finished by Wednesday to proof, (optimistic perhaps). I think the Pingyaou girls may become the seven dancing princesses (or maybe eight!).