Friday 31 May 2013

Artful Readers Club - Site Works

This month my book was Site Works by Robert Davidson. I bought this book after reading the precise as when my Dad first came to England from Ireland aged 18 he worked as part of a team of laborers in the highlands of Scotland.
The book clearly portrays the daily life and toil of such a group of men working in the present day to build a drainage facility. I could hear echos of tales my Dad told me of his experiences and can appreciate the hard conditions these men work under but I did not enjoy this book. It was a struggle to finish it and only managed it by skim reading long passages. Not a book I can recommend. There was too much technical jargon and descriptions for me and not enough in depth exploration of what I felt could have been interesting characters. I was not really inspired by it but have taken my inspiration from having visited Scotland and the young surveyor in the book who came to love his job despite the problems. I made a journal page.
Page one of my new journal. I used a Gelli plate to create the background and a separate sheet from which I die cut the pine trees. I found a silhouette of a worker with his hard hat on and used this to create my silhouette. I used a number of stamps from my stash in the background. I journalled around the figure but this does not show up very well in the photo.
Do take a look at the lovely art work created by other members of the club here at Darcy's blog.
Jen x