Ailing press

I have been really rubbish about posting this year. Didn't get round to building a crate for my press and shipping it North until October so finally got it back mid-December. Goes without saying that I'm very pleased to have it back. Five months with no press meant pretty much five months without any printmaking - or creative stuff at all in fact. Dreadful!

I need to make up for lost time. So, here's what I've done in the last couple of weeks. This is a small etching for a forthcoming print exchange / box set. Watch out for more about Wolus and Nile University for Esoterica and Woo.

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.

An etching press of my own

15 June 2009 was a great day for me – my etching press arrived! I still can’t quite believe it. It was delivered in the most enormous crate and I wondered if I had been sent the wrong thing; or I’d got my calculations wrong. But thankfully no, it was just exceptionally well packed for its journey from York. What a thing of beauty…

With the help of a couple of friends (thank you Gareth and Georgia) it was lifted onto the bench and, after trimming the blankets and putting in the bed, I was printing! Works like a dream; I pulled a perfect cardcut and an etching first go.

This morning I mixed up my first batch of copper sulphate solution and etched a plate – another first for Project Atelier. Put the plate through the press and the Undertaker’s sisters-in-law were born. I have my own etching press. I am very happy.

Project Atelier update

The studio is looking more like a studio as the days go on – having posted some photos of the inking and hotplate area, here’s the general work area on the other side of the studio. Things will change around again in June when my etching press arrives (ordered it this week - how exciting is that!). The glass inking slab will move to the general work area and the press will go on the bench where the glass is now. This is a much heftier bench so should take the weight of the press. I hope.

It’s wonderful in the studio; so peaceful and relaxing. I’m back to wood engraving now – very satisfying.

Also spent some time sorting out some of Dad’s tools to donate to a new project being set up in the area – bike recycling. The intention is to stop local youths nicking bikes by working with them to refurbish old ones. Sounds like a good scheme.

More found objects: a shoe last, many weights, a Salter's pocket balance, two transformers (the electrical kind, not the 'robots in disguise', a fire extinguisher, an oscillating fan, two model gliders, a rocking horse, a wind break, a gazebo, golf clubs, an elephant's headdress, a barometer, two thermometers and a thing for measuring humidity. It's quite dry in there - idea for storing one's paper