Description
I wanted to express the quality of the Yorkshire Dales topography, where you can be in a landscape that has no distant horizon. It is obscured by the rising hills before you that almost blot out the sky. The perspective of the objects on the hills is different from that in your immediate space. Both this and Dales Landscape 1 were made in my studio from sketches and photographs I took while walking in the Yorkshire Dales around Malham Cove. The process I used was, in effect, drawing in reverse.
I first cover a high quality paper with three or four layers of very dense graphite. I then begin erasing, gradually removing the graphite and work my way back to the white of the paper. The paper has to be good in order to resist the constant rubbing out.
I can’t make many of these because the process creates a lot of graphite dust and I am wary of breathing too much of it. I used this same technique for the drawing Rouen Cathedral in the Rain and the drawing London.
