Brainstorming concepts: distance, time, space and memory

Line Colour - Task 4: Haiku on "Distance"

Concept: Distance

The mind emptying

Into the dry pond basin

Thunder underground

I've chosen an emotional separation of thoughts from the sounds of rush hour on this corner of Borthwick Street, where the cobbled stones create an earthly rumbling. It also reminded me of how the plants in the dry pond have continued to grow despite the loss of water - the seasonal progress of root growth underground - natural forces dominating like thunder.

LINE - colour layering: Task 4, Borthwick Street

For this layering I chose clear acetate, and used a combination of permanent Sharpies, Wytebord Markers, Stabilo OHPen permanent markers and Pilot markers for Projector. The orangy-yellows of the autumn leaves were hard to replicate as this is not a standard marker colour. However I found a Uni Posca branded orange felt tip which did the job well - albeit with a heightened florescence.

There are 4 layers. A layer in black, a layer with blues/greys, a layer with light and dark greens and finally the orange/red layer. The final layer is really the strongest and records "accent" colours. It helps to blend these by placing them as the back layer when scanning.

It was also hard to work with a limited range of greys - particularly with a grey sky that didn't give as much definition to the white building as in previous sunny visits. The foreground details were also hard to achieve with the large tipped pens, but this detail is significant to the foreground and would have given the image greater character.

View along Borthwick Street

LINE - colour layering: Task 4, Dreadnoughts Walk

I revisited two sites from my horizontal/vertical landscape drawings from the previous weeks and took a photograph of the horizons. For example 1, I overlayed 3 layers of tracing paper and used a combination of coloured markers and pencil to pick our the main colour highlights. I had to limit the number of tracing papers to 3 because a 4th sheet was too obscure.

Horizon 1: View towards Canary Wharf from Dreadnoughts Walk

Blues

Red, orange and green

Greys (markers and pencil)

All 3 layers scanned together.

Man murders son with scaffolding pole

Man murders adopted Son with scaffolding pole [abridged text from The Daily Telegraph 1 June 2015]

Retired firefighter Colin McSweeney murders his son in row over custody of his granddaughter.

A man killed his adopted son by hitting him over the head with a scaffolding pole before making a bungled attempt to dispose of his body in the River Thames, a court heard.

Retired firefighter Colin McSweeny is on trial at the Old Bailey accused of murdering son Shaun at the family home in Thornton Heath, south London, on November, 20 2014.

McSweeny, 59, was caught by police after he was allegedly spotted in the early hours trying to drop the body into the Thames while the "tide was against him".

He allegedly killed Shaun because he was preparing to move out with his girlfriend - and to take his five-year-old daughter with him - setting the family on a "terrible collision course" over the child.

A search of the area uncovered blood traces on the wall, a piece of tarpaulin, one of Shaun's shoes and a trail of coins and buttons along the route his body had been dragged.

“getting rid of the body turned out to be rather more difficult than he had imagined and the plan quickly unravelled."

Discover more of Greenwich

Discover more of Greenwich, host to an innovate Sunday food market where international tourists and organic-loving locals join for a hip south-east London foodie scene. Traditional food chains are in abundance but you’ll also find many quaint old tea rooms and ye olde English pubs, nestling alongside a new Sunday pop-up offerering a true reflection of world food. It might really shake up your traditional Sunday lunch. Try the Pimp my Ramen or a Brazilian Feijoada, hot flavours of the Carribean or a Thai curry.

Sited on the redeveloped Greenwich Pier Gardens the area boasts emblems of British colonial dominance but which have been softened by a new planting scheme by the Royal Greenwich Parks Department. Warm autumn reds nestle alongside golden autumn grasses. Transport links have much improved including a direct DLR link from Bank Underground, a Thames cycle path and both tourist and commuter river bus services.

Landscape Architects: inspiration

Greenwich Foot Tunnel - looking south to Greenwich and Deptford bankside

The Greenwich southbank panorama

The tunnel at dusk. Great 1-point perspective.

Heavy metal plating on the stairs

A hundred years of footsteps; wear and tear on stone.

Tiny stalactites formed by water salts.

The nuts and bolts of engineering.

Horizontal Line Drawings: maps on location

Horizontal Line Drawings

Tate Gallery visit: Agnes Martin 1912-2004

Project One: Background, Task 2 Photograph 5 details

Stones of Time: the old, the new, history stacked together, being trodden on by an ever changing community.

Wood with lichen: wood for ships, trees witnessing generations of history. Fresh air - at sea and at home.

Mooring rope: a mossy green has grown through decades of tides, but the rope remains intact.

A Link in the Chain: exploring how everything is connected. The history of Greenwich bankside has been preserved although ship building and wharfs are no longer in use as originally intended. This massive anchor roots us all in history.

Nelson's Iron Braiding: something so delicate cast in a impermeable material. Linking a great man of Greenwich with the material's industrial future that Nelson would not have anticipated.

Project One: Background. Record 5 Horizons from Greenwich Bankside

Horizon from Greenwich Pier to the East. Interestingly shaped flats on the north bank of the river contrast with the industrial south bank with a horizon of cranes and gas container. The river seems particularly wide at this angle.

Horizon towards Canary Wharf across Convoys Wharf site. Looking at the contrast of the derelict building site against the backdrop of the shiny, new buildings of Canary Wharf on the Isle of Dogs. I used different shaped marks to give shade to the near trees, the pile of rubble and plant material in the foreground.

Horizon of Dutch gable houses along Borthwick Street. These white fronted houses of Payne's Wharf had a deep blue sky behind, making the gable frontages stand out as a stunning silhouette.

Horizon towards the Cutty Sark. This became a multi-layered horizon of history. Industrial buildings of the 1900s, the early 1700 Royal Naval College, the 1902Greenwich foot tunnel dome and the renovated Cutty Sark opened in 2012.

Serpentine Pavilion 2015: A Review