In attempting yet again to try to paint the 'common dry stone wall' in a way that captures that elusive merging of imagined lines and planes over each surface, I discovered a new technique this week.
Most often before it has been the randomness of shading and difference in detail in the texture of the stones that has been so hard to replicate convincingly.
My new method involves covering the surfaces along the contours with a continuous stream of text and writing. I ‘literally' colour/smother the area inside each stone with a kind of tiny scratchy hieroglyphics. As a result of applying this kind of detail, the stones take on a texture I quite like. In their individual placement the stones possess, what you might call, a new ‘contextual' element.
I’m also pleased with the implications of 'depicting' stones this way. With a kind of indecipherable trail of inscriptions, the stones in the wall become solidified paragraphs, each containing words and fragment sentences of form and thought.
