Drawing on paper

Signed on the front.

Betoota is a lonely place a long way from anywhere. Everyone has long since left but the place still boasts a working racecourse and a pub that opens for race days. A weather beaten cart sits in the sun. The wheels sag on the spokes as the last remaining paint flakes off and the iron rusts. In the 1880s many travelled across the roadless desert to Birdsville in carts just like this. It must have been a hot, slow and sometimes perilous journey under a cloudless sky and featureless landscape. The pub sits in the background breaking the horizon.
I used the image of the cart to portray the loneliness of Betoota and a pointillist technique to break up the ground and sky to give it life, applying layers of colour and fixing each layer so the previous layer shines through. I do not use smudging or blending so colours mix optically with the terracotta paper colour showing through to provide unity, create shimmer and life against the blue of the sky, and support the yellow red forms of the desert sand.