Sugar lift

I’ve just started experimenting with sugar lift (Camp Coffee and liquid hard ground) – some interesting results. I like the brushiness of it. Tricky knowing how long to etch for though; I over-etched the shadows on the sisters’ faces as you can see (scary), but some selective burnishing should sort that out. I hope.

Dilemma

I was thinking yesterday how incredible it seems that it was less than three months ago that the studio first began to take shape – and here it is, up and running and fully equipped, with the first etching entirely made there nearing completion. Yesterday was a day for retrospection; it was a year ago that my dad died. I think he’d be pretty pleased that his workshop is still in use for creative purposes, continuing the family tradition.

The sisters are almost done now; just the final tweaking of lights and darks and a bit of detail here and there. The text of the shop sign was a dilemma. I wanted Lycoris and Adrasteia to be inside the shop. However, if they were, the writing on the shop window would have been backwards, which may have caused people to think I’d messed up when making the plate. So, oddly, the sisters are standing outside their shop. But then, they’re an odd pair and it’s an odd story…

A delightfully printmaking-filled weekend

… is what I’ve just had. On Saturday I went on a wood engraving course at Red Hot Press, the print workshop I’m a member of, and jolly good it was too. Jutta gave us an excellent exercise to start us off and get us to use different tools to make a variety of marks. We had to divide the block in half and using a leaf as our basic form, engrave one half of the block black on white and the other half white on black. Not as easy as it sounds!

I was working on a block about 3cm by 1.5cm, the smallest I’ve ever done so that was a challenge in itself. Not particularly taken with the result but it was a really useful and fun day.

Yesterday I spent most of the day in my own studio working on the sisters-in-law. They’re barely a week old but showing signs of aging already…

The sisters-in-law are born

Lycoris and Adrasteia are the first characters to be drawn, etched and printed at Project Atelier – and here they are in their first state. There’s a long way to go with this image yet and I’m not sure what the next step will be.

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.

The Undertaker's Wife

The Undertaker’s wife could be found on occasion in the parlour of her husband’s premises, ‘minding the shop’.

A spinner by occupation, she would sit at her wheel, treadling rhythmically, left, right, left, right, left right. So smooth and regular were her movements and so gentle the sound of the flyer as it coiled the thread around the bobbin, that her customers would find themselves falling into a reverie as they waited to be shown into the Chapel of Rest. No one minded.

She worked with quiet concentration, holding the fibre in her right hand and letting it play through the fingers of her left as it fed through the hooks of the flyer. When it was a little too thick, she would tug at it lightly to even out the thread. Sometimes, she would bend her head towards the wheel with slight nodding movements which every now and then became so violent that her long, loose hair swung forward and barely missed becoming tangled in the workings of the wheel.

Lycoris and Adrasteia

The Undertaker’s sisters-in-law are taking shape. They’re a funny looking pair; I like the way that my characters sort of form themselves… they come out how they come out and are quite often a surprise to me.

The photograph shows the plate as it’ll be etched in its first state – just the basic outline of the pair. I’ll build up light and dark, tone and texture with successive etchings.

Now to the Undertaker’s wife…

Reflection

It’s funny what a difference putting a print away for a few days or weeks can do for ones perceptions of it. I often dislike work when I finish it and then put it away to flatten. I come back to it later with fresh eyes and it usually (but not always!) looks a lot better. I guess I get sick of the image when I’ve spent a long time working on it and am unable to view it objectively. Such was the case with my cockle wood engraving.

I said goodbye to a friend today. I’ve not known her long but have developed a fondness for her and a great respect for her wisdom, compassion and ethics; I’ll miss her. Sad when we have to say goodbye to the really good people.

I wanted to give her something to say thank you and the cockle seemed the most appropriate, the sea being a recurring theme in our conversations. I was pleased when I got it out of its tissue. I hope she likes it and it will be a positive reminder of a good ending.

Project Atelier update

Work continues to go on in and to the studio; the workspace is evolving as I settle into it and find the best ways of using it. Having spent several hours on Saturday dismantling an eight-foot long, floor to ceiling built-in wardrobe and shelving unit, I’ve happily found a use for some of the bits that I haven’t taken to the dump. One of the wardrobe doors has provided me with a larger work surface and the small cupboard doors will make excellent print flatteners. It’s functional rather than aesthetically pleasing, but that was always the Bennett Price way, so I’m content to continue the tradition. Just three doors, two end pieces and half a tonne of three by three to get rid of now…

The Undertaker's sisters in law

The undertaker’s wife was a robust woman. In comparison both her sisters were slight. Lycoris Moir, the taller of the two, was tousled and bespectacled. She measured her customers for their mourning clothes with a faded linen tape measure, checking, double checking and checking again in the most meticulous fashion that she had the correct figures jotted in her notebook. The notebook was so full and tattered and ink-smudged that it looked as though it recorded the personal dimensions of all the bereaved of a millennium.

‘We are data-rich, my dears, data-rich,’ she would tell her sisters.

Adrasteia was shorter, smaller; petite. Raven-haired and sleek, she had a disconcerting habit of studying her clients intensely, then tilting her head to one side as though she had made some silent, immutable judgement. She would raise her rusty tailoring scissors and snip snip the air in front of their faces, her black eyes glittering.

‘But husband-poor, my dear, husband-poor.’

Unsatisfactory

No takers for my cardcut course this weekend sadly so no teaching for me. This means I can spend the weekend packing up books so that the builders can get to where they need to get. Lucky me.

The cockle wood engraving is finished. What can I say? I don’t like it. It’s flat and uninteresting. Good practice though. Hope the etched version turns out better on Friday.

An image of the Undertaker’s sisters-in-law is forming…

The Undertaker's Nuptials

Started putting some words down for my next series of prints. Having spent so long illustrating other people’s words, it was really satisfying to illustrate my own in creating the Red Scar series. That happened by accident really; the story (never finished) was written to amuse a friend and I hadn’t intended to use it as a starting point for a series of etchings… but that’s how it turned out. The image of the three characters in the coach was so vivid in my mind, I had to make a drawing of it.

I don’t like my drawings. As a rule, they’re fairly dead on the page until I turn them into a print. I suppose it’s the combination of textures and quality of line and tone which is impossible to create in any other medium other than printmaking.

This time, I’m going one step further; writing the story – The Undertaker’s Nuptials - specifically to generate images. We’ll see how it goes.

Digression

I realise this is off-topic but I had an interesting visitor this week; an archivist from the West Sussex Record Office. A few weeks ago, whilst clearing Dad’s workshop in Phase One of Project Atelier, I found some boxes of film from the 1920s and 30s. These were shot by my Great Uncle Harry Guermonprez, co-founder of the Bognor Regis Film Society.

I feel strongly about local history and preserving our heritage, possibly because the city I live in was mutilated first by bombing in the second world war and then by poor town planning. What was once a thriving, modern port, rich in historic buildings, is now a featureless 21st century city, much like any other, with docks that are really beginning to feel the squeeze of the economic downturn.

I’ve never been able to experience the old Southampton, except for the odd building or ruin which is all that’s left of the medieval city. I can appreciate the old photographs and films however, so I emailed Screen Archive South East which already has a few of the films made by the BRFS (see clips of them here: BRFS at Screen Archive South East). I was then contacted by Alan at the West Sussex Record Office who was quite excited by my news as he’s a bit of a fan of Uncle Harry’s apparently. He and a couple of colleagues have written a book about cinema in the region and had included a fairly comprehensive chapter on the BRFS (he brought me a copy – very interesting).

During his researches eighteen odd years ago, Alan had managed to track down what he thought was all that was left of the BRFS’s films to an ex-member of the society in Southport. Hearing that there were more (about eighty reels when I counted), he was quite keen to have them for the archives. I was also able to give him a couple of BRFS event programmes, one of Uncle Harry’s film projectors and one of his old cameras; the sort that has a sort of folding-out, concertina-type thing and takes photographs on glass plates. Please excuse my very untechnical description...

Alan and the team at Brighton University will digitise the films so that they are available for people to view as important records of social history. They may also make a short film about how the two collections came to light. Bonus.

Project Atelier update

Phase One continues.

More found objects: an old 1950s movie projector and film splicing thing. A feather eiderdown. And a wok. A snooker cue, a sail maker's palm, two cans of spray adhesive, fishing weights. A china doll, a Benares brass top table legs, a big bag of flox. A case full of early twentieth and late nineteenth century sheet music. A coat stand, an album of photographs of my mother from 1947, cards congratulating my parents on their engagement.

In the loft: An old box brownie, an early 35mm camera, two bowler hats. Another movie projector, a slide projector, model planes, a five foot tall wooden standard lamp carved in the shape of a lion. A wedding dress, corsets, pictures, a silver tankard, a tea service, old books...

Photos: exterior shots of Project Atelier

An unusual bookbinding press

Had a good few hours in the studio today – back on the cockle wood engraving. I arrived at the stage of being able to take the first proof which is always exciting. Still a lot of work to do on it but it’s good to be able to see where it’s going. However, I find that I tend to change style part the way through the engraving which isn’t very helpful; and it’s really noticeable on this one. Hmm, not quite sure how to fix it at this point…

I tried printing the block on my bookbinding press for the first time. Really didn’t think it would work but it’s great. A bit fiddly to get the block, paper and vinyl (used like an etching press blanket) under the platen as it only just fits but it actually produces a better print than I was pulling by burnishing. Bonus.

I’m including a picture of my bookbinding press in this post because it’s an unusual design. Bought it from good old ebay but the chap who sold it to me didn’t know anything about bookbinding or printing or this press. All the ones I’ve seen have either a T-shaped arrangement for screwing down the platen; this one has the screw underneath the arm bits (technical term there) and a lever for increasing the pressure once the platen’s been screwed down. I’d be interested to know if anyone else has seen one similar.