Susie Turner

Susie Turner, Cotinous Grace, photopolymer intaglio print, 2013

Interesting talk last Friday by printmaker Susie Turner who visited Red Hot Press to give a solar plate masterclass over the weekend.

Susie talked about her processes and the ideas behind her work. She is particularly interested in nature and the changing seasons. There seems to be quite a pleasing conflict in some of her work between order and chaos. She arranges many of the elements in an orderly, systematic way, but nature will do its own thing and always brings a little disorder to the images. At least, no two elements are the same, whether leaves, feathers or seeds, no matter how regular the pattern they're arranged in. 

Have a look at her work on her website here.

Etching and monoprint

Back to the printmaking briefly. Had a rare day printing with friends at Red Hot Press last week. Still on the Greek theme - etching and monoprints.

No escape...

Feels good to be starting a new etching... apart from my small North and South print at the beginning of the year, it’s been a while. Not quite sure where this one will go but it will have monoprinted elements as well.

A couple of months ago, we had a session looking at our progress so far with North and South. One of my fellow printmakers said to me of my image, ‘it’s very you.’ It got me thinking about the work (and lack of!) I’d been trying to make over the last eighteen months or so, and how I’d been trying to move away from narrative ‘illustrative’ images. Without much success. It was a really useful comment as it made me remember that you can’t really escape yourself when it comes to making art - you have to make the work you make. That doesn’t mean you’re not going to progress and push your work forward - it’s still perfectly possible and vital to do that. You just can’t force your work in a direction it doesn’t want to go. So, for me it’s back to weird, slightly grotesque narrative images. The techniques will change though, and that's what will push the work forward.

And if anyone is wondering where the life drawing has gone, that’s all on hold at the moment as too much other stuff going on. I imagine I'll get back to it at some point.

Looming deadlines

We're nearing the handing in deadline for our collaborative box set. Not usually a fan of printing editions but I really enjoyed this one. And what could be more satisfying than a pile of prints, trimmed, numbered, titled and signed?

Tuesday life drawing

Tuesday life drawing

Worked on an etching plate (soft ground) last week, this time graphite stick on newsprint, but for some reason, it didn't etch very well. Hmm. I have theories. Back to the drawing board.

Soft ground etching day

Taught a one-day soft ground etching workshop last weekend. Here are some of the fabulous prints produced (apologies for he rubbish photographs - they really don't do the prints justice!).
 

Still alive...

Well, that's a bit rubbish isn't it. No posts since February. The last few months have just been so ridiculously busy, with All The Things happening, that there just hasn't been time for any non essentials. 

Some creative stuff has been happening; I was going along quite nicely with the above soft ground etching and looking forward to things easing off a bit, only to have my press break a couple of weeks ago. Aargh! Feel like my right arm has been cut off. Haven't had time yet to do anything about getting it fixed - that's top of the agenda this week (after all the chores, work, Aged P appointments of course...).

Life drawing has finished for the summer, as has the Beginners / Improvers course I was co-teaching (maybe I'll post some images from that) but I'm preparing to teach a soft ground workshop next month which should be fun. I'm enjoying the research for that. 

Hopefully the dust has settled a bit and I'll get some time to do my own work over the next month or so. My main focus is going to be on drawing. Am reading an interesting book - Experimental Drawing by Robert Kaupelis. Planning to try some of the exercises to push my drawing forward - more on that in the coming months hopefully.

Tuesday life drawing

Drawings made on four A4 etching plates this week. Three of the plates have already been etched, one not, so we'll see what happens...

Progress

Two more images in my Palimpsest series are underway. These are all prepped with a soft ground for life drawing tomorrow evening. I have no idea where this is going at the moment. Wheee...!!

Tuesday life drawing is back

 This term's life drawing started up this week. Made three A4 drawings on tissue over a soft ground so that should give me something to work with for a while. Three plates on the go at once! Four if you count my Small Faces. New way of working for me.

Definitely feeling rusty after the Christmas break but one of the good things about this way of working is that it doesn't matter if the drawings aren't any good - I can just remove the bits I don't want.

More Small Faces

Three submissions for Small Faces; the graphite drawing already posted, a hand-coloured etching of good old PB and a soft ground etching entitled What We Remember.

Small Faces

Here's a grumpy face to start the new year! Currently working on submission for Small Faces Open Exhibition at Solent Showcase Gallery in March. The organisers are hoping to fill the whole gallery space with A6 sized portraits.

This one is a quick pencil sketch but I'm also working on a palimpsest style etching too. More on that later.

Palimpsest continued

 





















Here is the first print in my Palimpsest series; three drawings, two of which were the same, the final one made directly on the plate last Saturday at life drawing.

And here's the second plate etched and printed. This is the first stage of the next Palimpsest print. Printed a small edition of four of these, even though this isn't the final image. 

Palimpsest

Following on from my post on 7 December where I'd started to burnish back the image and etch over it again, I found that burnishing alone was too laborious and not effective enough, so I had at the plates with a scraper and then a drill with various grinding and polishing attachments. Much fun and some interesting effects.

I drew another figure over this image at life drawing on Saturday so watch this space for a scan when the print is dry.
 

December life drawing

Charcoal drawing - 3 x 5 minute poses

It was our monthly Saturday life drawing session at the art gallery at the weekend. This month I took along some etching plates to draw directly onto them to capture the full energy of the drawing on the plate. This gets lost when transferring a drawing from paper to plate as you stiffen up and lose a lot of the extraneous marks made when searching for the image. 

The images below show the drawing as made on tissue paper laid over a soft grounded plate (left). The images on the right are the tissue paper taken off the plate and scanned to see the drawing more clearly. 

The first pair of images were made on the plate shown in my previous post so when etched, there will be fragments of the previous drawing. The second pair are on a new plate which will gradually become layered with images; a palimpsest of figure studies.

Starting a new plate

Had a day at Red Hot Press this week minding the shop. Managed to make a start on new plate Dramatis Personae. Transfering the basic image onto the plate to make the first line etch. More characters will be added but this is the initial drawing to get started.

Building on a Foundation at Southampton City Art Gallery

 
Prints by members of Red Hot Press are on show at Southampton City Art Gallery at the moment. I have two pieces on display - my dragon roof tile and of course, PB has to get in on the act! He wouldn't miss out! On until 24 June 2016.