All content - Martyn Johnston

Line Nude:

This  one was taken from an image I found online somewhere (sorry I can’t remember where).

It’s just a single line drawing. So it is also a single saw-cut with the scroll-saw; just a very slow, and very careful, cut..

I loved the simplicity of it.

Once I’d made it it looked very ‘flat’ and a bit dull, but I noticed that, when I was sanding it smooth, when I put any pressure on it it was enough to slightly bend the wood, and the shadow that added changed it enormously. So it is glued to the back-plate with a couple of pieces of wood behind, to hold this slight bend and show the shadows.

I’m still in two minds as to whether to continue work on this one; I might dry-rub some black paint carefully on the high points, to accentuate the relief. Or I might go the opposite way and gently spray it black, and then sand off the high points.

Can’t decide which will work best.

It’s cut from 6 mm thick, pale, fine-grained baltic-birch plywood, on a 6 mm thick black background.

It’s 16 cm wide x 25 cm tall.