A gathering in the woods

I have been working on a drawing challenge with the Brooklyn based illustrator and writer of The Flat Files, Elizabeth Daggar. I was taken with Elizabeth’s usage of chance and interesting materials in her work, especially the dark black and white ink works that have a wonderful sense of weather and foreboding, like this one:

No.12 Glints on the Terrain

When I read this post, I started thinking about the difficulty of describing visual art in words. Or the gap in translation between words and the language of images. This is, of course, the big issue with AI generated imagery. I thought it would be interesting if we gave each other a written description generated through AI and see what images we could come up with. I uploaded one of my paintings to ChatGPT and asked for a 50 word description that I filtered a few times trying to make it a bit more abstract and atmospheric. I sent the paragraph to Elizabeth and she sent me hers, based on one of her own artworks:

Shrouded figures rise from the water’s edge, their black forms stretching upward like silent sentinels. Beneath them, two small, pale beings peer out, their wide eyes reflecting the dim light. Above, something looms—watching, waiting. The rain falls in quiet sheets, but the stillness feels heavy, as if something lingers unseen.

I knew from the beginning that I wanted to try to create an image that is very moody, with a lot of weather or atmosphere. I feel this aspect tends to lack in my work generally. I took inspiration from Elizabeth and decided t work with inks and let them interact in their own ways.

I did some two colour ink splotches that I then sprayed with a mister and changed the angle of the paper to get them moving across. That is how the image above started. Then, using a black pen, I began to find figures or characters in the image itself. I worked from my imagination and tried to move the image toward a kind of strange gathering in the woods. I really like the mix of the two inks and the effects that arose by chance. I found it hard to elaborate on it though. I felt the need for a way to erase back the ink or, in some way to do several layers. The main challenge was to take advantage of spontaneity while trying to somehow shape the whole thing into somekind of image.

For my second attempt, I had a more clear pre conceived idea of the kind of image I wanted to move toward.

I needed a way to bring back some lighter values so I used some white conte and a few collage elements. This was a pretty uncomfortable exercise but I think that means I was on the edge of my abilities. I have always had trouble working without reference and I definitely felt it now. This is an area where I want to get more traction.

Here is the artwork upon which I generated my prompts for Elizabeth. Check out The Flat Files to read about Elizabeth’s version and impressions on this project.