Book selected: Selected Scottish Drawings, National Gallery of Scotland
Drawing is a crucial element to my practice and I chose this book because I wanted the challenge of trying to make something new and personal from an existing volume and relate it to drawing in some way.
The book is illustrated with black and white reproductions and it enabled me to use pen and ink, which is a medium I am comfortable with. Plants, especially wild plants interest me and symbolize nature’s power and ability to reclaim and eventually obliterate what human activity creates. This seemed an appropriate theme to pursue as I reclaimed the pages and changed the images below as I drew.
Having an existing drawing to work upon created areas of tension and confusion, delicacy and simplicity where the existing drawing complemented, influenced or worked against what I was trying to do. The surface of the paper was different to that which I would normally use but it gave the ink an unusual quality and flow and allowed me to develop my technique.
The experience of altering this book has encouraged me to search out more volumes to alter and I am currently working on another book which is a book about drawings. Here I am working mainly across text which describes drawing and drawings and it is fascinating how one reads parts of the text as one draws. This influences the line and creates different relationships in another interesting way.
email : j.hyslop@eca.ac.uk
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