Snow Garden, winter 2009
Framel from Crisium is one of a serice of drawings which result from the rough animation which I have worked with during the past decade and results from a method of stop-motion animation in which I drew on enlarged photographs using charcoal, by progressively erasing all or part of the drawing and then drawing it again (on the same surface) after photographing each 'frame'. Any drawings that result from this process are therefore secondary to the film itself, and often the actual drawings are partially or completely destroyed in the act of creating the animation. Often there are annotations present around the outside of the paper as I scribble down the action which might follow, as this process is somewhat 'reflexive', and often sequences are only planned a short distance in advance so that the work may take unexpected turns as it develops. The drawings often contain traces of previous marks which have been rubbed out, which sometimes provide a sense of movement. Most of the drawings have been made in black and white, with charcoal and white conte pastel, but more recently I have been finding ways to involve colour. Photographs that are selected for drawing on could be from any source, although the content of the resulting films were sometimes derived from newspaper images, from photographs I had taken myself, or even from other artworks. having a photographic background for the drawing and animation is not always necessary, so some will be made on plain paper.
The animation drawings are as follows;
below are links to some clips of short animated films to which these (and other) drawings relate: http://www.axisweb.org/seCVWK.aspx?ARTISTID=5792 http://video.saatchigallery.com/artist/profile/32169/Jenny+Mellings/JennyMellings.html I
The drawing Snow Garden is unrelated to animation, produced as a more traditional observational tonal study only, made partly from life, with information gathered also from photographic evidence and memory.
Projects planned for the near future include drawing/animating with pastels made from local clays and earth, and rough animated drawings made directly onto surfaces outdoors in the environment.
