November, 2024

Colour Studies

Part II

It’s a Sunday, and I am sitting down with a cup of tea, pondering what to write. I think I find if I start to explain how I feel when coming to write the post, it helps me form the words and ideas of what to write. It can be very easy to keep on making the work and not stop to see what you are creating, and how it makes you feel. So, in saying this, I am trying to mark Sundays as a day for contemplation. This can include cooking and my indoor gardening, as these help me switch off completely. And, by switching off completely, sometimes the answers come to you, perhaps when you’re peeling a garlic clove, or trying not to over water a cactus.

I thought I would begin this post with a page of my scribbles from my folder of notes. I tend to write a lot of notes and then return to my stash of notebooks a little while later. Sometimes, when rereading my notes, I get the same feeling that I got when writing them: the hope, the excitement, of something sparking; an idea forming, a curiosity.

Whilst developing my research into colour and light, it has re-awakened my roots in fine art. I realised I had become overly focused on photography. I studied painting in art college and it was here where I discovered the darkroom and analogue processes. I now understand it is the study of colour and light that interests me above all, and that I don’t have to limit myself to one discipline. Subsequently I have decided to bring pigments back into my practice, in order to study what happens when working with colour in light and also in pigments.

Sometimes I am in conflict; do I stick to one discipline, or should I explore further. This question crosses my mind a lot. For example, I love cinema and it constantly influences my work, but sometimes there are only so many photos I can create. I feel I need to delve deeper and ask more questions of my practice. I need to leave my comfort zone to further explore colour and light, and this brings me to other disciplines. However, the fact that I have moved away from just building sets, doesn’t mean the same subject can’t inspire me anymore. Looking back, it was my perception of colour that informed what props and fabric were used.
I also became aware that it was the combination of colour, light and texture that inspired me.

With all this in mind, I decided to embark on a new process:
Screen printing

Screen printing uses pigments and, when I speak of pigments, I generally mean paints/inks/powder. I am now able to study colour in the form of light(photography) and pigments(painting/printing). Both screen printing and colour darkroom printing use a subtractive process. The subtractive primary colours are magenta, yellow and cyan. A colour darkroom print uses filtered light, the colours being cyan, magenta or yellow. For my screen prints, to stay consistent, I am also limiting myself to cyan, magenta, yellow pigments, as I wanted to see how many colours I can produce in both processes. With screen printing, I created a 6 rectangle test strip stencil to match the photography test strips I do in the darkroom.

Below are my first tests prints showing both screen and darkroom prints.

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First tests to achieve red using magenta and yellow inks.

A screen print showing the colours magenta and yellow layered, 2024.

Showing the intensity change with two layers of magenta.

What happens when yellow and two layers of magenta overlap.

First tests achieving red in the colour darkroom. Using only magenta and yellow light.

As I continue with the tests, I will start to bring in other colours. It’s a long process, but a beautiful one. As I started to accumulate the test prints, they began to fill box upon box. With this in mind I decided to create small sketchbooks from these prints. Working as a technician at a university, we have a lot of backdrops that are used in the photography studios. The paper from these backdrops eventually gets thrown out, and I wanted to find a way of recycling this paper. I decided to cut up the paper into sheets and stitch the pages together to create my own colour sketchbooks. Each sketchbook is dedicated to a colour, and each colour gets a version in light and in pigment.

The following two photographs show the front covers of the sketchbooks that I have created.

This sketchbook shows different combinations of yellow and cyan to make green using the filtered light in the colour enlarger.

This sketchbook shows different combinations of yellow and cyan to make green using yellow and cyan pigments.

The next two photographs reveal some pages from a sketchbook. These sketchbooks have become critical to my work flow, as they have become a designated place for all of my notes, as well as a visual reference. When I am in the middle of the printing process it becomes natural and you intuitively know how to layer the colours. However, if you step away from everything for a couple of days, it can take the mind a while to get back into sync. Having these books is a great aid in helping me understand what I was last working on.

Top image - creating green with light.
Bottom image - creating green with pigments

I will pause for now, and I will continue this conversation in the next post. Here is a sneak peak of some of the images I will be sharing; a continuation of sketchbooks and layering, with an introduction into stencils.

I am sitting down trying to write this post and I look across to see what song has just come on, and I misread the title of the song. I read ‘Troubles of the World’ as ‘Troubles of the Word’. Rather fitting and wondering if it was a subconscious move.

Somehow working on this post is harder than the first. As promised from the previous post, I want to dedicate this entry to colour. Even now as I sit at a desk to write, I want to get up straight away, I just can’t seem to sum up the words. Why is it that one of the things I am passionate about I can’t seem to write about. I have accumulated many notes, but when it comes to writing about colour in my practice, a big fat wall comes crashing down. Perhaps writing will help. I have come to realise this post will have to be the beginning of an investigation into the process of my colour work, as when I try to fit everything into one post it becomes overwhelming. I think I need to do this in small chunks.

Form, shape and colour. Creating, collecting, archiving. These are the words that spin in my mind when I think about my practice. Sometimes people say drawing a mind map helps, and sometimes I do. Here is one I did this month, and it points out further how stuck I am. It didn’t help me materialize a structure, but again more questions on how to bring them together.  I keep researching on colour and, instead of writing, I keep making notes.

Slowly over the last 2-3 years I have been building a wider knowledge surrounding colour. And it all stems from colour printing in the darkroom. I have recently expanded this to colour in pigments, but maybe that will be a follow up post. The more I printed colour, the more I wanted to understand what was happening in the process. I started reading more books and found a process called trichromatic photography.

Trichromatic photography is accomplished through colour separation of the negatives. A scene is shot three times onto black and white film with a coloured filter over the lens. One through a red filter, a second through a green and a third through a blue filter. Once the black and white film is exposed and processed, these negatives are then individually placed into the enlarger and a positive print is made using the red, green and blue filters again. Once the three positive prints are made, cyan (complementary to red), magenta (complementary to green) and yellow (complementary to blue) are then ready to superimpose to create one final colour image.

In the gallery, the first attempt reveals that I didn’t quite align the negatives correctly, but it also shows how the colours form when layered, and I ironically prefer this to the final print. Due to this being my first attempt, I also think the camera moved during one of the exposures, but it was still a rewarding experience. I loved that it took hours to do and you have to stop and take your time. One print takes me around 3 hours to complete and it must all be done in complete darkness. There is something addictive about it that keeps me going.

Here are a few other examples I have completed. I am tending to use trichromatic photography for specific places, for example when I went to Avebury to see the Stone Circle, and The Devil’s Chimney outside Cheltenham . It makes it more of a ritual, and I feel that these places deserve this slow methodical way of capturing them.

This last image was an accident and I truly love it! The negatives were aligned correctly; I just didn’t put the paper in the correct rotation.

Here is an example of how the black and white negatives taken from Avebury & Devil’s Chimney look. I have labelled them RGB, corresponding to what filter I used. It’s tricky to see online but you can see blue and yellow in the trees, and I think this is due to movement of the trees during exposure. It’s not a perfect colour balanced print, but I think that is to be expected as there are so many variables to go wrong. If I try and shift the color slightly it can completely go the other way.

Doing this process of trichromatic photography, it got me thinking about colour on its own, how the presence (or absence) of light determines what we see. How light waves are absorbed or reflected. I wanted to remove the photographic element and just print pure colour. Now, I can’t explain this fascination other than it’s an obsession for me right now. Maybe the answers will start emerging, the more I work and try to explain my investigations.

CMY Cube
Handprinted contact colour darkroom print.

Colour printing is a subtractive process. This allows almost any colour to be formed by subtracting (absorbing) certain colours from white light using coloured filters and permitting other colours to pass through. The subtractive primary colours are magenta, yellow and cyan. A print is then made when white light is projected through the enlarger. The light is filtered through a combination of magenta, yellow or cyan filters before it reaches the paper. Cyan on a whole is not really used during colour printing as it can be created by the magenta and yellow filters, but that is to not say there aren’t instances where it can be used. For now, let’s just leave it with magenta and yellow.

Anyway, enough technical talk, but I thought it was important to share the process as it is slow and requires a lot of patience and continuous experimenting. My first experiment was to see that if I used only magenta and yellow filters at different intervals for certain time periods, could I get the colour red?

All prints are handprinted in the colour darkroom.

For me to see the colours and their layering fascinates me. It also sends my mind into a whirlwind as to how it all works. It makes sense when reading the science behind colour, but when I see it physically on paper, it bewilders me. It’s a beautiful process combinging time and light and what our senses perceive.

I am in a constant flux of waves where I want to be as far away from the photographic image as possible, which is why I think I have gone abstract with my colours. Then I get pulled back into the image.

Going foward, I want to focus on colour and senses, but I need to find a way to make it sound less technical. Perhaps I need to be patient. As I learn more and let it sit with me for a while, then I might be able to free myself from the constraints of technicality and put my own spin on it.

The more I move forward with colour, the more I am starting to feel balanced. I am interplaying colour with different mediums. It has taken a while to realise my practice is not static. It is constantly flowing like water, As the water flows down, it may pick up more water from other small streams, which I see as branches within my practice, which eventually leads to a lake or the ocean to form a bigger meaning.

Image courtesy of NASA
I  found this image showing what rivers and streams look like from space, which is a great analogy showing branches in an artist’s practice.

For now this is probably enough talk. In my next post I will show how my colour work has developed. I will show more indepth my colour samples that I am creating and my working notebooks that include smaller prints and notations.

Here are some examples.

Page from my one of colour notebooks.

Studio notebook

I wanted to create a space, (online studio notebook) to talk about the importance of a studio practice and share how some of my works are created. A studio, for me is a personal space that exposes what the artist is thinking, the inside workings of the artist’s mind. A space that constantly ebbs and flows, where work is placed on walls, along with inspirations and ideas. I like to call these walls ‘working walls’. My working walls are like my studio sketchbooks, they help me work out problems or give me inspiration when I need it the most. I want to find a way of sharing what happens in the studio. The process is vital to my practice and is the essence of my work, or perhaps the studio is my work. I find there is a less opportunity to visit studios. Studio spaces are declining as rent soars and buildings are being bought over for flats or future offices that will remain empty. The importance of my work lies in the studio, and I want to find a way to bring this to the public. The importance of tools, objects, notebooks, ideas, the need to make and think.

For me it’s hard to reveal my work online, not because I am private person, but it’s hard to reveal a feeling, a sensation without physically seeing it or holding it. When you walk into someone’s studio or even someone’s personal space you already get a sense of what they are interested in. Perhaps it can be compared to reading a book, it’s not until you have read a little that you start to understand the author or maybe not in all cases, but it’s still that breathing space that allows you take in the words you read to form an impression. An online presence can work great for people, it can help reach a larger audience to most corners of the world, but I find even websites are being ditched for social media accounts, like instagram, where you condense all your work into a post or story and through a tap of a thumb you are liked or the dreaded alternative, you are scrolled on. If you don’t reach an audience in that one post, they are lost forever, unless you have a good hashtag. There is no anticipation for work to be released, or to be eked out slowly. If you don’t have ‘x’ amount of followers then you are not good at what you do or you are seen as someone doing it as a ‘hobby’. I have found in the last year stagnation in myself and it has to change. I have to admit I have posted work on instagram to see if people will like certain new works. This has only led me down a path full of anxiety (more than normal), and wasted time checking my social media accounts to see who has liked the post. I felt at one stage completely lost to what my practice was and if it was worth pursuing. Thankfully, I have a compulsion to keep progressing, my practice is apart of me, and my mind is constantly thinking and researching. Perhaps this post is my catharsis, but I ready to move forward and in the words of Sol LeWitt to Eva Hesse

"just Stop it and just DO”

I have included a bit of the letter below as I feel it benefits everyone in today’s world.

Dear Eva,
It will be almost a month since you wrote to me and you have possibly forgotten your state of mind (I doubt it though). You seem the same as always, and being you, hate every minute of it. Don’t! Learn to say “Fuck You” to the world once in a while. You have every right to. Just stop thinking, worrying, looking over your shoulder, wondering, doubting, fearing, hurting, hoping for some easy way out, struggling, grasping, confusing, itching, scratching, mumbling, bumbling, grumbling, humbling, stumbling, numbling, rambling, gambling, tumbling, scumbling, scrambling, hitching, hatching, bitching, moaning, groaning, honing, boning, horse-shitting, hair-splitting, nit-picking, piss-trickling, nose sticking, ass-gouging, eyeball-poking, finger-pointing, alleyway-sneaking, long waiting, small stepping, evil-eyeing, back-scratching, searching, perching, besmirching, grinding, grinding, grinding away at yourself. Stop it and just

DO

Page 1 of LeWitt’s letter to Hesse (courtesy of The LeWitt Collection)

Below are some examples of my studio ‘working walls’

One of my earlier studio ‘working walls’

New works in progress

Plaster, drawing, black and white darkroom print.

Lately I have been introducing plaster into my practice. I have been learning to cast and create molds. With my previous works, I created sets from collecting props and fabrics and now by introducing sculpture into my practice, it’s like creating my own props for my sets. Still holding on to the cinematic aspect to my work.

In the below images, I have collected pieces of driftwood from my trips to Dungeness, there is something sacred about Dungeness and for this reason I wanted to create my own totems. As well as plaster, I am beginning to experiment with wax casting. I am still in the early stages, but it is such joy to using these materials, I can’t fully understand what got me started working with plaster, other than a strong urge, a craving that won’t go away until you finally succumb, and I am so glad I did!

Continuing with totems, I have become enthralled by forms and shapes, currently I have impulsions to create pyramids, and I am trying to learn why. It is leading me down a beautiful road full of sacred geometry, forms, and philosophy, which I hope to share more in the coming months through the newsletter and my blog.

Artist Residency

Isle of Wight, 2023
Black & white hand printed darkroom print

Towards the end of June I will be heading to Isle of Wight for one week as part of an artist residency.

I am aiming to spend the time focusing on research & writing towards my practice. It can be hard to focus on writing. Whenever I am in the studio, I always feel the need to create, or I tend to feel guilty reading in the studio instead of making. To have this designated time to spend recollecting thoughts and research feels like a lifeline to my practice.

Next post will be focused on colour! This is something I have been working on the last 2 years. I will be dipping into the tri colour process which I have been doing in analogue. I will share some pages from my notebooks and show some works that haven’t been seen before.

Thank you for your continued support, Sam x