This has been an elective which I have thoroughly enjoyed and am still working on. Having been shown fairly basic techniques, I have been able to transform development work into booklets.

This is a close up of a pattern detail in the booklet. This book was used to record all the patterns taken from buildings in For Cochin, Kerala and B-Kothakota, Andhra Pradesh.

The illustrations are in gold and orange acrylic paint with pencil.

This is a pop-up book - very simple but effective. Made from an old map, painted with acrylic paint and fun with cut-out windows and doors.

India has dominated my university activities since the return after Christmas. I visited Andhra Pradesh and Kerala over two weeks with Andrew and Hamish to visit Rhona and her Project Trust partner Rachael. I came back armed with photographs and a sort of scrap book. These have given me source material for studio work, Artist Books and visual culture material.

Studio Work - first of all I made a colour wall incorporating drawings made from photographs and coloured paper with scraps as backing. These allowed me to see compositions and connections. Initially I made a series of six collages, each made of three sections of wood exploring colour and pattern found on buildings. The collages were photographed on top of coloured tissue paper to supply a more conformist shape with the view to use them in paintings.

This is one painting - the first of four - which arose from a larger painting that did not work. This is made up of an acrylic and enamel background. The enamel is to give the painting a metallic edge. Oil glazes were placed on top along with thicker applications of oil paint.

Painting Two

Painting Three

And finally Painting Four
None have been given names as yet but will do so for the 2nd year painting exhibition later next week. They are all the same size despite the fact that in these photos they do not seem to be.

32.5cm x 25 cm

I had a lot of fun with this part of the project. This container is still there - getting rustier by the minute I should think. The rust gave rise to a lovely texture and colour. Orange and blue in all hues. These are small(ish - 60 cm square) paintings - square using acrylic mixed with sand and pva glue in places to give body and weight to particular features.

Camptoun Farm had lots of lovely buildings on offer - all sorts of building materials in differing states of 'good health'! I arrived at two paintings from this part of the project - the Barn and the White Shed.

This is the Barn - painted in acrylic but also in parts where texture seemed to ask for it - acrylic mixed with sand and pva glue. I was happy with the window detail. As the picture is so large and the shape dominates it, the window and the slanted guttering allow the eye to travel and find a way out!

The White Shed. This is a 1 metre square painting - executed soley in acrylic paint. I was attempting to give the painting a specific atmosphere. Where there is no crumbling paint on evidence, the decay and transient nature of the building are alluded to by virtue of the fact that the building seems to float and fade away. The wires that cross the painting at an angle above the shed is rather a fortuitous touch as they help anchor the building to the ground.

The project following on from colour was termed Structure. For this I looked locally for stimulus and found plenty by way of agricultural and storage buildings in East Lothian. This combined with Trekken - a postcard activity throughout ECA took up my time.

First of all Trekken. I used this to consolidate my focus and technique on structure through texture.

The first set: On the postcards suppled I first of all applied a ground cover - acrylic paint mixed with pva and sand - then once dry drew on top - again with acrylic paint.

The second set: used material from the Project Space - Debussy etc.

The third set: used material from very early work looking at texture and colour.

Not sure what entirely to call this entry. Issues arose with domain name or some such thing. Whatever - carolduff.net has now become duffce.com which is no bad thing.  Just have to update entries and redo business cards.

So what has happened since October 2011. Cannot believe it has been that long. Ridiculous.

Time to catch up with projects if possible.