The Raiders of the Lost Update

In my last post I forgot to mention that that there was an important development last week:-

I did a page of red goache experiments and then absentmindedly
 worked over it in black goache and ink, continuing to try to recreate
the feeling of a cave. I felt the red added something over the
monochrome studies- the sinister side to caves?

 

I tried recreating it and I was quite hard to get the same effect.
However I liked the base red goache shapes and I felt they 

still communicated something about the caves.

 

Although it looks quite abstract, the red reminded me
of how strange the light (and how it falls) is in a cave 
as well as the slightly sinister air, unsettling feeling
 in a cave. (two things I wanted to recreate).

Through development I made multiples with varying levels of darkness and black in the composition, my thinking being it was like walking into a cave. I haven't really really been working from direct reference - some of my loose drawings from caves and from memory of working as a cave guide last summer (something I feel I could have drawn on much more?). I've made enough of these for my book and I think this is what I'm going to do (late in the day I know!) slightly conflicted- not sure if its interesting enough and still have this nagging feeling its TOO abstract. Thinking very carefully about how I will use words.