Formative -Exhibition 2 prep - addition of colour…

Now that I had decided I want to include branches that I forage locally in my next exhibition and I wanted to build a tree out of them inside out studio space, I realised I wanted further ways to bring the bright colourful tropical colours further onto the branches other than through my bird paintings.

I began by thinking in what ways do people add colour to rural surroundings and immediately thought of nature trials and the use of different coloured ring markings around trees and branches and on signs to show different walking routes and ways to travel to reach different destinations. I loved this and wondered how I could broaden the colour range and increase the quantity and frequency of these coloured bands occurring on branches of a tree in the woods.

I decided to collect together different coloured pieces of ribbon and card strips and tie and fix these onto a tree in a cops to discover the result.

I really enjoyed this experiment and realised that the rings of colour were a real asset and could work really nicely in my exhibition piece to bring. ore colour onto the branches of the artwork. However, the main reason for my love of working with wood is the textures, shape and composition of the wood and its bark also. covering these branches in ribbon and card, although adding colour, also took away some of the woods tactile quality.

In response to this I decide to forage for some twigs and branch sections in the woods and try a different approach to add colour to the branches while still maintaining the texture. I used acrylic pint for this using a well pigmented paint in a thin layer across the wooden twigs in bands. I feel this worked a lot better allowing textures and shape to show through the paint but still adding pop art style colours to the natural element of the wood.

I have shown photos pf the results below.

I find the paint to be really effective on the twig sections and I decided to defiantly include these coloured bands onto my tree structure for my studio exhibition piece. I really love the colours chosen here and using a green brings more of the tropical environments forage colour into the British woodland as well as the vivid primary colours of the blue and red often seen on tropical birds of all kinds and flowers for that mater.