I have chosen George Seurat 1859 – 1891 as my inspiration because A) I like his work and B) despite his short life he produced a large body of work from which to draw inspiration. I have begun by using his black and white drawings as a starting point. 

For Seurat black and white drawing was a perfect medium, more than using just individual lines he rubbed rough paper with a greasy crayon, therefore creating tones of blackness. He wanted to be a painter of an instantaneous view of a single moment with no movement. As somebody who often works from photographs the instantaneous moment is totally apt and something I relate to totally. For this first piece I have used a photograph of the river Charente in flood in the town of Saintes which I took on December 25th 2019.

To recreate the heavily textured paper I have used old cotton sheeting. I have used black thread and black paint but I strayed slightly by using black vilene for the reflection of the tree trunk. I stencilled and stitched the main lines and then applied the paint before returning to stitching in more detail. Seurat has a way of leaving patches of the page totally white, which I have tried to use, to give more light and definition to the piece, I found that leaving the halo around strong sunlight very difficult to blend in the lines are a little too regular and angular.