Wild and windy weather...

I've missed not going to Geevor for a couple of weeks, so I'd planned the trip today whatever the Cornish weather decided to throw at us. Unfortunately, I'd planned to make a detailed study of the pithead, but as this can't be seen clearly unless outside was forced to think about other (indoor) areas.

Having started to study tone in drawing, I worked solely today with a range of 4-8B pencils in my sketchbook, deliberately trying to describe what I drew using tone values rather than line. I found that working indoors while the wild squalls rattled the roof made me more inclined to spend longer on each piece- with one exception-and I came away with a satisfying six pages filled.

As we'd arrived early I decided to head into the Dry first, so I could work uninterrupted before many visitors arrived. On my previous visit I'd tried to take some photographs of the lockers, but the very bright window in the background confused the camera and the results weren't good enough for reference. The study above took me about 45 minutes, the hardest part being the shape of the boots- this side of the room is relatively dark and the boots are defined mostly by the shadows made by the moulded ridges on them. I found I had to concentrate on negative spaces to get the whole to come together correctly.

After a quick pit-stop for coffee I dived into the sample hut to make some more studies of the pots and paraphanalia on the shelves. Since my last visit the hut had been tidied up and the pots were mostly in regimented rows, but I did a couple of studies nonetheless.

The fuse box above is the one connected to the ball mill, a fantatic device which tumbles mini cannon balls with tin ore to pulverize it further (imagine a giant gemstone tumbler). This corner is really dark so I wanted to capture the shapes of the various components as I find them great jumping-off points for abstraction (see also my earlier post of the pit-head fuse box).

This partial sketch was because I found the overlapping circles full of energy, but despite trying to define some construction outlines the sloping angles of the cogs threw me out- as you can see I misjudged the lower intersection and placement of the furthest wheel by rather a lot!

The cogs are made of wood and are actually mould formers, they were pressed into sand or clay to form the mould where the metal was cast into. They had to be made larger than the finished piece to allow for the contraction of the cooled metal, no mean feat when many of the carpenters of earlier times had little more than rudimentary numbering skills!

 It was not the easiest to see as you are looking between some foreground objects - another cog on one side and a combination vice/anvil type workstand on the other- which can be distracting. I'm fairly sure I have a photo from an earlier trip, probably not a good exposure,  but may find that the items in front obscure the cogs.

Another pair of formers, this time of a gear sprocket and a half section of a bore thread. I loved the shape of the gear but just failed horribly on the angles, a more technical contruction approach needed I think! The screw thread is a beautiful work of art in its own right, made of finely carved and smoothed wood.

For my final drawing I went to the drill store, where a row of stoping drills are stood along one wall. I particualrly liked the shapes made by the spring lever, especially when seen from different angles. I probably spent about 40 minutes on this, long enough for my husband to go and watch the entire documentary film in the adjacent Hard Rock Museum!

It occurred to me while I was working on this that I was probably better able to see the tones and shapes because the object was somewhat alien to me, so I see it only as pattern and shape. To clarify- I mean that if I had gone in the workshop at home and drawn the bandsaw, or an electric drill, I would have responded differently to them because I know what they do, what it feels like to use them, and what their component parts look like if stripped down for maintenance. I would have probably made assumptions about what they "should" have looked like on paper as a result, and then wondered why they hadn't come out right! With the stoping drill, although I know how it's used, (to bore holes for blasting) I'm not being so subjective when I look at it. Maybe I can develop this into a "once-removed" technique when drawing more familiar objects!

Possibly this theory could underlie my fascination with Geevor, as it gives me so many images of new things to record in an impersonal way which I can then develop and abstract at leisure.

I shall meditate further. Meanwhile, I need to get this pithead drawn- I can see potential for a landscape inspired by Patrick Caulfield's fantastic lithographs...

Bits, pieces and thinking...

I've been doing a lot of thinking about where this project is actually headed, but in the meantime thought I would share these details of the area with you. They were sketches of details in the landscape taken on an earlier visit to Levant Mine which is immediately next door to Geevor. Partly these will figure in a landscape painting I am working on, but I am still considering which elements will be added to the final version.

Thinking is as far as I get while at work (the rigorous rules in a food-production environment make using a sketchbook while on duty (under a surveillance camera) a one-way ticket to not having a job! However, thinking is free (at the moment) so I have had plenty of opportunity to consider where this mining project is going.

It is evident that the people - the miners - are going to play a major role in it, and as I originally envisaged this as a visual arts project I am still not sure whether I want this to expand into personal histories or how to contain personal memories within my own discovered images. I also find myself wanting to branch out into poetry or prose to define an impression in words instead of images, but I am wary as this path can lead to arabesques of self-important wordcraft and lose the original intention. And my intention is, at present, still nebulous but based on producing imagery to explore the historical Cornish mining environment, and to ultimately link it to its co-existent partnership with Welsh coal-mining and ore processing.

Both industries have died in my lifetime, but have been re-kindled through tourism, and that is how I have discovered both. I am the voyeur looking in with little comprehension, and I need to scratch deeper to get at the meaning.

Background picture

I was asked by a friend what the picture was which I use for the background of this blog, so I thought I would share the whole image. I cropped it in order to draw attention to the faces.

There is a long passsageway which leads from the "Dry" (the locker and shower room) to the pit-head lift which used to take the miners underground. The Dry itself is a very nostalgic place to be, especially if there are no other visitors present, and there are many lockers left as they were when the mine closed. You truly then get a sense of the lives that were lived in what was then a very closed community, both from geographical isolation and from a lack of comprehension from the outside world.

The passageway and the area just around the corner which was used to wash mining grime from boots are lined by photographs of the men who worked here in the last days of Geevor. Some of these men still work here now as guides. As I walked down the passageway I thought to turn round, and it seemed fitting to record this image of  "looking back", figuratively as well as literally.

As the whole building is stained with red dust from the prolific iron ochres in the earth, it seemed an appropriate image to use for the blog. Many red hues are also derived from tin compounds, although (listen up, factet coming up!) cassiterite (tin ore) , if scratched on an unglazed clay surface, produces a white line due to the presence of tin, despite being blackish to graphite coloured. Which is where the Cornish flag derives from- white tin (often called white metal) crosses black earth (the native cassiterite). Cool eh?

ps I've just randomly remembered that the periodic symbol for tin is Sn (Stannate) which obviously has nothing in common with cassiterite- will research and get back to you on that one, especially as there seems to be some confusion in the Cornish language between tin and donkeys...more on that on later...

Fusebox in charcoal

Although I haven't been to Geevor this week, I wanted to work on a larger charcoal piece to try and get better defined shapes, and practise precision when using this very loose medium. I chose this photograph which was very dark, but I like the strong square shapes in it. This fuse box and switches is in a building immediately adjacent to the man-lift housed in Victory Shaft.

I toned the paper all over initially before building up layers of dark tone to define the shapes. Finally I lifted some highlights out with a plastic eraser.

My original intention was to abstract these shapes into a painting, but the more I look at it I think it would be interesting to attempt a cut-paper drawing (effectively a collage). Still musing...