Seascape Polaroid Transfer

I enjoy the actual procedure of creating thes polaroid transfers. It is a tactile, hands on and unique process. The polaroid itself is a one off and there's absolutely no way that you could get two transfers to sit on the chosen surface with any intentionality, given the incredible number of variables. I particularly like the white mark in the bottom centre of the image, I've no idea how or why it happened.

These polaroid transfers are a little too 'style over content' but I have hope that the process can be used to make a series of work that I will hopefully publish very soon.....

Transfer number 2

This is the next experimental image utilising the transfer method. Quite simply, the view from outside my kitchen door looking north-east towards the estuary.

Plaroid Transfers

I have very recently uncovered a pretty old technique. It involves picking apart a polaroid in hot water, peeling the emulsion off and lifting it out the water on another surface. On this occasion (still in very experimental times at the moment) I decided on something quick to hand, an envelope. The image was a pretty lifeless polaroid I captured with a 70s SX-70.

Complete image

Without a line connecting the two images there seemed to be something unnerving about the picture, a mild visual dissonance that made it uneasy to look at. The line added the transition from solid ground to water and directly and physically linked to two subjects.

I'm not yet sure if I managed to capture and communicate the overwhelming childish desire to play, have fun and imagine; I think I need to digest the image for a while. No doubt, things will change in time. Something I didn't initially consider was the perspective the viewer may side with, the little boy looking up at a giant girl or a little girl playfully looking down at a tiny boy in a paper boat. Is it Brobdingnag or Lilliput?

Something I particularly don't wish to change is the juxtaposition of the coloured skin and the simple inky line. As Kimi Kimoki put it:

"Light, the work of the naked parts, finished elements juxtapositioned with spaces, are the points on which I centre all my attention. Get close to reality in order to go out into it and exrapolate it. Create a fiction in which the characters and objects are suspended between illusion and truth. My intention is to highlight the beauty of that which our view tends to trivialise"

The Boy in the Boat

This is the little boy I added to the Indian Girl picture I'm working on. I actually used an image of my nephew and adjusted it so that it looks like he's gazing up at the girl. It was drawn at A4 but the print size will be much smaller despite the whole final image being A2 due to the size of the boat.

Work in Progress

During my holiday in India my partner capured a picture of an Indian girl crouched down fascinated with a floating piece of paper in a flooded pool of monsoon rain water in Mumbai. Her whole attention was focused on this small piece of sodden paper, transfixed by its movements.

I'm using an amalgamation of hand rendered and digital techniques. The outline and hair are hand drawn and the skin is produced by selecting, by eye, areas of similar tone with the Lasso tool in PS CS4, a tone is selected with the Ink Dropper and then the area is filled. This is not produced with any filter or other automated process. Having to look at tones and colour and make visual choices adds to the texture of the final outcome and put the control wholely in my hands.

I aim to have the girl looking at a paper boat with a small child aboard looking back up at her. Locked in a moment that captures the imagination of kids in a not-too-ficional work of their own.

Watch this space to see how it develops.........