I am continually fascinated when photography takes on qualities that are from other mediums. Painterly is one such quality that photographers have been working at emulating for over a century. Pictorialism is the first movement towards making photography into an art form. It thrived between 1885 to 1915. One of their favourite techniques was bromoils, where the dark silver was bleached out and the tones were added with ink and a brush. A technique that directly emulated painting.
Todays equivalent, it could be argued, is adding brushstrokes as layers over photographs in photoshop, and using luminance masking to control tonal relationships.
I have fluked a few photographs that looked like pencil drawings. But I haven’t figured out how to do it on demand yet.
Creating artworks that reference ‘Ink’, is increasingly capturing my attention. At first it was brush and ink. Something very Japanese or Chinese painting seemed to influence my work. I used to love this as a teenager, I spent countless hours drawing with drafting pens, and adding ink washes to my work.
Similarly to my photography, I was side tracked by colour and took up watercolours as a natural progression. It’s a pity I wasn’t able to identify at that age that my natural talents lay in monochrome and abandon colourful watercolours then.
It is clear to me that my best work is monochromatic, even my colour work.
So, I am at it again. This time my camera replaces my technical drawing pen, quill and Indian ink. I start the road of experimenting yet again.
Today I start the Abstract Photography Workshop in Port Stephens, and my personal side project is to play with ink.
Artists are like that, continually exploring, experimenting, pushing our own boundaries. New directions. Never one to stand still.
The 2019 program for my workshops and tours is almost complete. I am taking bookings. http://lensschool.com
Mount Wilson. Photograph and text copyright © Len Metcalf 2019