I have my own studio!

It’s just beginning to sink in that I now have my own studio – a long-held dream. Still quite a bit to do to get it fully up and running and it will continue to evolve naturally over time, but I pulled my first prints in it on Saturday – wood engravings. How exciting is that!

Ordered some copper sulphate crystals for etching from Hawthorn’s yesterday and hung up a load of inky scrim to dry from my last visit to the workshop. Smells wonderfully printkmakingish in there already. Took a desk and chair up today so I now have somewhere to sit down and work.

I was thinking today how… bizarre it is really. I started this blog less than two months ago, intending to write about wood engraving; the whole point was that it’s a form of printmaking that I could do at home which wouldn’t take up much room. And here I am, determined to go back to etching and setting up my own studio.

I HAVE MY OWN STUDIO! How lucky am I.

Project Atelier: Phases Two and Three begin…

Phase one continues (three car-loads of stuff to the dump so far, more to go) but being an impatient sort, I’ve started phases two and three as well.

Phase two: shifting all my existing printmaking and art-related equipment into the studio – going well and almost finished.

Phase three: procuring the necessary items that I don’t already have like heating, inking slab, etching and water baths, copper sulphate and a press. Doing well here – heaters ordered, baths bought and inking slab reclaimed from behind the garage. The main window of the studio used to have a hole in one side of it (it’s double-glazed) and when I was in there at the weekend, I realised there was no hole in the current one. Dad must have replaced it at some point. Had a look behind the studio and there was the old window, just waiting to be turned into a massive and magnificent inking slab. It’s about three feet by four and was wedged into a narrow gap between the fence and back wall of the studio, so took a bit of huffing and puffing to get it out. Also to get it onto the bench in the studio! It’s a perfect fit though so I’m well chuffed with that. The photo shows the slab in situ, and my hotplate and general inking area.

Just need to get the copper sulphate now, and the most difficult and most expensive part – the press.

Other objets trouves: a brass letterbox, an air pistol (delivered to the Police on Thursday), an old copper kettle, framed photographs of unknown early 20^th Century gentlemen.

Spoils...

Not finished yet but here are the fruits of my labours at the workshop on Friday. The first four states of the villain from The Red Scar series of etchings. Not sure quite where I’m going with this one.

I’ve all but abandoned the cockle commission for the moment, partly due to a broken fine spitsticker (less than two months old and NO, suppliers, I had not been misusing it) and partly to my defection back to etching. The cockle is very different from my usual style of work; I tend to go for figurative images and dark narratives. It will get done though.

Project Atelier: Phase One update

Spent most of the day yesterday, and part of today, clearing out the new studio, with grateful thanks for the assistance of G who was necessarily ruthless and uncompromising with my hoarding instincts.

Found items: Great Uncle Art's cornet, three hurricane lamps, a nautical rescue line, an aircraft wheel, two very old clocks, a cricket scorer, flags from several different countries, a chord changer, a pencil pointer, a strange gadget with a handle and a compass on top attached to a stethoscope type thing, an altimeter, four doorbells, an airspeed indicator, springs of all dimensions, reels of old film from the 1930s, nails, nuts, bolts, washers, screws, rivets of every size and shape known to man (and some that aren’t) in industrial quantities, fibre glass and its associated chemicals, every conceivable type of sticky tape, rope, string, bungees [am I boring you yet?] little drills, big drills, massive drills, more drill bits and attachments than it’s sane to possess, huge quantities of scrap metal and wood, enough tools to kit out an entire DIY store – twice, sanders, grinders, polishers, buffers, waxers [I’m boring myself now], incredibly shaped drawing instruments, the biggest chisels I’ve ever seen, two car battery chargers, two multimeters, books on aircraft stressing, mechanics, engineering, electrics, physics, maths, meteorology, radio communication, a radio for listening to air traffic control, garden loungers, garden chairs, shovels, rakes, forks, hoes, shears, a tree branch lopper ridiculous numbers of flower pots … and this list is by no means exhaustive…

Mmm, that was indeed a good Friday.
Solitude at RHP; just me, my etching and a few sea gulls. And a spot of rain of course – wouldn’t be an Easter bank holiday without it – but it’s warm and dry in there. And above all silent. It seems odd to me that one can get to a stage in one’s life where one craves silence… but there it is.

Normally I do a lot of preparation at home for a day at the workshop, but life is so crazy at the moment that I just hadn’t had time. I wanted to finish a plate I last worked on in October (the fourth image in The Red Scar series), but when I looked at the last proof I pulled, I just had no idea where to go. Depressing. In wood engraving mode only perhaps…

ANYWAY. Once I got to the workshop and started working on the plate, everything fell into place, tcp. The plate’s not finished and I didn’t achieve an awful lot print-wise, but I had time, space and quiet for a good old think.

I had originally envisaged Project Atelier as a space to work on wood engravings; I’d be able to have all my tools and equipment in there (freeing up space indoors – I might actually be able to see some carpet here and there) and I’d could then leave everything set up. Away with spending hours getting everything out and putting it all away again afterwards – bliss! This is all good, but yesterday reminded me where my heart really lies – etching. That’s my thing. As much as I love wood engraving, it just doesn’t suit my work and processes like etching does. So, Project Atelier is gearing up a notch…

Project Atelier: Phase One

The idea for this project was suggested by a friend some time ago but for various reasons, I didn’t think it would be worth it. However, I changed my mind yesterday morning and Phase One began in the afternoon.

The photo shows my father’s garage cum workshop which, since his death last summer, has become a general repository – for junk mostly. I’ve been dreading having to clear it as it had a lifetime’s accumulation of aircraft-building tools, gadgets, spare parts and detritus. He built real ones that people fly in, not model planes, so it’s not just a few hand tools and a smudge of glue we’re talking about here!

Good old G has mentioned to me several times what a excellent studio it would make, and she’s right of course – thank you G. Just terrifying to clear. And sad. I miss my dad and there’s so much of him in there; it’s going to be hard. But cathartic too I hope. And he’d be glad that I’m using his workshop to printmake in. Anything to do with tools, bits of wood and metal and he was happy.

Spent three hours on it yesterday but have barely scratched the surface… will keep you posted…

What next?
Now that my edition for Print Zero is travelling (safely I hope) to the west coast of the USA – to the city where I spent the first five years of my life, oddly enough – what’s next? I have a few things on the go, but my next wood engraving project is a commission for Hilary C. She has a friend travelling the mediaeval pilgrimage route to Compostela, the Way of St James. Apparently, the cockle shell is the symbol of St James so pilgrims wear on badges today. Hilary wants me to make a cockle shell related print.
Here’s the drawing I made for it.
Hmm, this is going to be interesting! Not quite sure how I shall manage it as a wood engraving – etching, yes; wood engraving, gulp… I shall be working on a block 10 x 7.5 cm which is twice as big as the biggest block I’ve used before; still pretty small for me. With etchings and cardcuts, I’m used to working a lot bigger, but wood engraving… challenging. Watch this space…

Print Zero

Finally finished and printed the edition of 15 wood engravings for this year’s Print Zero exchange. Just need to give them a few days to dry, then they’ll be ready to trim, number, title, sign and pack up ready for dispatch to Seattle.

'Alack! bare-headed!'

Print Exchanges…
are lots of fun. I’ve just received a call for entries to the 6th print exchange run by Print Zero Studios in Seattle. What is a print exchange? Briefly, printmakers from all over the world submit an edition of prints (in this case, 15) to whoever is organising it. Two of the 15 are kept for exhibition and archive purposes and the other 13 are randomly dispatched to other printmakers who took part. This means that everyone submitting gets back a portfolio of 13 different prints by 13 different artists. Plus, you get your work exhibited in other countries; for instance the last Print Zero exchange showed in seven venues across the US and in Denmark. The cardcut on the left was my submission.

I also submitted for the first time this year to another exchange run by Oregon Ink Spot. Deadline was yesterday so it’ll be interesting to see what comes my way over the next few weeks.

Back to wood engraving

Portraiture is my thing. Most of my prints have people in them, usually in a portraity way, so I thought I’d continue along those lines for my initial wood engravings. The ones I’ve made so far seem rather too ‘white line-ish’; not something I’m hugely keen on. Hence my next experiment which was an attempt to achieve a more ‘black line’ appearance.

Having drawn the image on the block, I cut both sides of the lines to leave a black line in the middle. At this stage, I proofed it to see what the lines would look like (see right); an interesting image itself.

After that, I continued to cut away until something that looked reasonable emerged (see below left). I think one is supposed to plan the images more carefully – I tend to just get the outline down, then cut in an instinctive way, making it up as I go along. I don’t think that’s how it’s meant to be done...

What a good day I had yesterday.
After five long months intaglioless, I finally got a chance to get thoroughly inky again. There’s nothing so satisfying as being able to look at one’s blackened fingernails and ink-stained skin, knowing that there’s a batch of freshly pulled prints – good ones at that – flattened under boards to dry.

I really didn’t expect to pull so many good ones yesterday. Five months is a long time to be away from one’s work. Prior to that, I was printing and etching every other week and working on the plates in between. Working that intensively, you become familiar with all the little nuances of the plates; you know exactly how much ink to use, which areas need a little more or a little less; how to wipe, where to wipe vigorously, where to wipe gently. As you pull each proof, you study it and notice all its subtleties, making decisions almost subconsciously as you go along. It sounds poncey I know, and I like to think I’m not pretentious but I think it’s true to say that you work with the plate rather than on it. That’s what’s so wonderful about etching – you’re never quite sure what you’re going to get. You have an idea how it’ll look when you pull that first proof, but there’s always an element of surprise. The plate, the ground and the etching solution all conspire to give you something you didn’t quite expect. It may not always be a good surprise of course, but that keeps you from complacency.

Yesterday I printed the second and third images in my Red Scar series. I’ve used details of these in the blog header and as my profile picture. They’re soft and hard ground on zinc, with some rather haphazard use of straw hat varnish, etched in copper sulphate solution. The plate area is approximately 15 x 10 cm. Like most of my work, they are illustrative – based on a story about a highwayman. A story destined never to be finished…

Using line and stippling to create tone

Here are my first experiments. Odd how, even though the marks are quite dense in places, still, the overall impression is one of dramatic lighting. Maybe not so much with the stippling. That looks quite stylised actually.

I’m not particularly happy with these but there are elements of both that I like; the eye in the first image and the nose in the second. They both look better if you squint… Lots more practice needed!

What’s the purpose of this blog?
Partly for me to record my progress learning a new technique and partly as a place for me to reflect on my art practice. I would say that 80% of the creative process for me goes on in my head. I tend to mull over ideas for weeks before actually putting anything on paper, card, zinc or wood; presumably this can be said for most artists to some extent. I do make a few notes in my sketchbook but they’re minimal.

The first thing I discovered about wood engraving was that it’s by no means as easy as it looks! Much more difficult than linocutting, not just because the matrix is harder, but because one is working on a much smaller scale. I very much admire the work of engravers such as Hilary Paynter and Jim Westergard and I suppose in my ignorance, I was aiming for that kind of neatness and detail straight away. Think again Jo. Obviously, to produce that kind of work takes years of practice and an innate talent that no amount of hard work can produce. So, here on this blog, you can see my humble, clumsy but well-intentioned beginnings.

I started off with a box of practice blocks; hence the odd shapes of some of my initial prints. I quite like that actually – gives another dimension to the work. Certainly I think it worked with Comedy and Tragedy (below in previous post).

Wood engraving (as any method of relief printmaking) produces very different results to etching. I’ve had to reorder my way of thinking about an image; instead of working from light to dark as one does with etching, drawing the darks onto the plate, I now have to work from dark to light, cutting out the lights from the dark of the block – if that makes sense. Also, the whole process of creating tone and texture is very different. The possibilities are endless with etching – with wood engraving, there seem to be many more constraints. And yet, look at Hilary Paynter’s Goblin Market or Jim Westergard’s The Artist as a Viking and you see that it can be done. First task then is to experiment with different mark-making techniques.

It’s been a fair few years since I did any relief printmaking; linocuts of course. These I did after I left art school and no longer had access to an etching press. As the subtlety and variation of marks, tones and textures of etching were what drew me to printmaking in the first place, and really suited my work, I found lino a bit frustrating. I know many artists are able to bring a delicacy and textural quality to this medium, but I just couldn’t. What I produced was so flat and chunky – and downright clumsy – that it just didn’t grab me at all. There followed an eight year hiatus during which I just drew a little and made the odd linocut. Luckily for me and my frustrated inner printmaker, an open access printmaking workshop opened up just down the road from me - and I was away!

Four and a half years of thirst-quenching intaglio printing later, I find that owing to family illness, I can’t get down to the workshop as often as I did. But I have to print, no matter what. Those wood engraving tools that I was given for my birthday over a year ago, and sit untried on the bookshelf, look mighty enticing now…

Wood engraving
What's that all about? I'm an intaglio printmaker by default; etching, drypoint and cardcuts. Personal circumstances, those annoying things that get in the way of one doing what one really wants to do, have all but wrenched the etching needle out of my inky hand and taken away the copper sulphate bath.

After a period of vowing never to print again, here I am, spitsticker in hand, discovering the wonders of end grain boxwood, lemon, pear and maple. Mostly maple because I'm not rich or very good. However, I am hopelessly hooked.