Hocus Pocus

For this exercise I wanted to try and group a more coherent theme using my favourite glass bottle, and after an hour of ransacking the house for long-lost items put together a collection loosely based on a Magikal theme. I couldn't find an old book until my husband trawled up a wonderful early Victorian album of his grandmothers.

I started with a fairly conventional viewpoint and played around adding and taking away various items (1). On the second study, as my objects had fallen off the edge, I briefly played with the potential of doing this deliberately, with the vague concept of reaching through the veil between the worlds (2). I took a much higher viewpoint which put the composition into a triangular frame, which I really liked, although the pestle and mortar didn't seem to fit (3).

In the interests of experimentation I fetched a besom and a long scarf of a similar blue to the bottle to try and elongate the picture frame(4). I thought this had possibilities but I was working in a limited area in the window. I had one hook above from which to suspend the scarf (there is no curtain rail in here) and the besom had to be wedged awkwardly and appeared to be too large an item. Rearranging the objects tended to block any light from the crystal ball which I felt should be a main focus of the composition.

I added a glass goblet and tried another sketch (5), but returning to a more ordinary viewpoint was not very satisfying after the dynamic ones I'd been developing. I decided that the third, triangular one had the best potential for further work but used the goblet rather than the pestle. My final sketch was to put the objects and the triangle against a dark background to see how that could affect their appearance.

I really enjoyed working with this subject, having loads of ideas. I have quite a definite idea about how I want a final piece to look, with low lighting and highlights describing the shapes, in the style of some of the Old Master still lives, but it is clear that I have some technical lighting issues to sort out first and probably need to set the arrangement up in a space with controlled lighting conditions. I would also like to develop a second, more abstract approach in a more graphic style, and at present not entirely sure whether either will be drawings or paintings.

However, having decided on the group, I'm in the process of enlarging the outlines onto an A1 working cartoon to allow further consideration once faced with the larger scale.

Izzy Whizzy let's get busy...