Woodwose

After the hectic run up to and pleasant Christmas Day (I can recommend Moroccan spiced pie as a vegetarian alternative to turkey), it’s been good to be able to spend a few quiet afternoons in the studio, skypeing with Arizona Jim whilst working on my woodwose aquatint.

Often appearing in medieval European literature, artwork and architectural decoration, a woodwose, or wild man, is an oddly hirsute character sometimes shown brandishing a club. The idea is that he somehow bridges the gap between human beings and the less civilised woodland creatures such as elves and spirits. You may come across him in conjunction with the Green Man, another mythical character who has foliage sprouting from various parts of his face. This print was a bit of an aside really, sort of a bridge between projects.

Studio time has been scarce over the last couple of months so my first resolution of 2010 is to set aside Sunday afternoons at least as designated studio time. That doesn’t mean I’m a Sunday printmaker however… more on projects for 2010 next time.

An unusual project

I’ve been given a rather interesting project by a friend of mine. She’s a creative type herself; a garden designer primarily with massage and naturopathy thrown in. She recently had some fairly extensive remodelling done on her house and found a piece of the original wallpaper still attached to the wall. The house was built in 1928 so the paper is rather elderly. My mission is to turn it into a plate of some sort, collagraph I guess, and print from it. It’s quite heavily embossed so I’m hoping that with a few coats of varnish, I can stop it from flattening as it goes through the press. I shall try printing it both intaglio and relief to see what I get.

Card cuts at Red Hot Press

I spent a very pleasant day last Friday teaching a card cut workshop at Red Hot Press. My three students, all of whom are practising artists and printmakers, were delightful company and created some interesting images.

We spent the morning looking at the different effects that can be produced with card cuts; line, tone and texture, and the variables such as types of card and varnish. My students then made some plates and varnished them. We had a relaxing lunch whilst waiting for the varnish to dry, then spent the afternoon printing and experimenting with intaglio and relief techniques.

Something that struck me was how difficult it can be for experienced artists to learn new techniques sometimes. I think to avoid discouragement, it’s important to stop oneself from becoming too bound up in the image. One should try to concentrate on the technique itself; mark-making and experimenting with all the variables a particular medium offers. Maybe look at the final image in detail, picking out what works and what doesn’t, rather than viewing the image a whole.

Image by Ruth Barrett-Danes

Back in the studio

It’s been some time since my last blog entry – too long. That’s a clear indication that I’ve not been doing an awful lot creatively recently. Sometimes life just gets in the way.

Having said that, I had a good day at Red Hot Press yesterday, printing for an open studio event and preparing for a workshop I’m teaching in a couple of weeks.

I also started on a new plate; always an exciting thing. I want to concentrate on improving my aquatinting skills with a series of portraits (self and of those near to me) so the narrative skein of my work is on hold at the moment. I felt really inspired by the quality of the paintings selected for the BP Portrait Awards this year; wonderful technically, compositionally and atmospherically too – almost makes me want to paint! Human faces are an endless source of interest and inspiration so hopefully that will keep me busy for a while.

All kinds of dust

Day four of building mayhem (oh the dust…!) and I’m actually getting a lot more done in the studio than I thought I would, experimenting further with pine resin as an aquatint. My first efforts, in I which I used it with sugar lift, were interesting - if you want the subjects of yr portraits to look as though they’re recovering from a hideous accident - but weren’t really what I was after (see the example below – and that was AFTER cosmetic surgery…). I’m not entirely sure what was happening here; it may have been that the water to melt the sugar was too hot, or that the liquid hard ground just didn’t agree with the pine resin. The ground lifted off in unsubtle blobs which was too uneven for what I’m trying to achieve.

Having abandoned the sugar lift, I am now just stopping out areas with the liquid hard ground – with much better results (see above and below). It’s easy to get in a tangle here because it means painting out the white areas with a dark liquid, but then, printmakers are used to doing things backwards anyway!

Exhibition update

The summer exhibition frenzy is almost at an end now. Oxmarket has been and gone; sold three prints, all of them dark, so I may have to rethink my supposition that people don’t like gloomy images on their walls! Hampshire Open Studios finished at the weekend. The Wayzgoose was well attended and Southampton Ukulele Jam tore the place up with tunes such as Rawhide and Come Up and See Me. Some lucky person won a copy of the Made in Southampton limited edition box set; fifteen original prints by members of Red Hot Press presented in a hand-made folio, complete with a specially commissioned forward by Philip Hoare, winner of the 2009 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction. Print Zero Print Exchange 6 exhibition opened in Seattle on Saturday and I’ve just got to get my selected work to the workshop for it to be taken to Bristol for IMPACT 6, then that’s it for this year I think. Time to concentrate on producing some new work.

The Albion

I got to have a go on an Albion press this afternoon – get me! I spent a very pleasant afternoon at the home of wood engraver and fellow Red Hot Press member Jutta Manser who is the proud owner of a small Albion press. And what a thing of beauty it is. Jutta showed me how it worked and I printed a couple of my own wood engraving blocks on it; wonderful.

Made in 1884, it’s a magnificent piece of engineering. And ornate with its gold paintwork on black. One has to keep reminding oneself that these were actually working machines used in the printing trade, not merely decorative ornaments. Even the feel of it, winding the plate in and out and pulling across the handle with a satisfying clunk, is most gratifying. I can’t help but wonder about its history; where it’s been for the last 120 odd years… and how nice it is to be a little part of that history, if only a speck.

And congratulations to Jutta for having two prints selected for the Society of Wood Engravers annual show at Bankside Gallery, London in September. Richly deserved.

Hiatus

Creative activity seems to be off the agenda for the next few weeks or so while home becomes a building site. Much preparation to do before the builders start; stuff to sort out and get rid of, furniture to move, prints to take off the walls… we are in chaos. So, all I can do at the moment is think about my work, which is no bad thing as I feel I’ve come to a bit of a sticking point anyway.

It’s becoming increasingly difficult for me to find a niche for my work. Galleries aren’t keen on it because it’s too illustrative and although I have had good selling years, private collectors seem to find it too dark for their walls, once they get the references. I’d like to get into book illustration but again, where do I fit? Too dark for children’s books and there just aren’t many illustrated books for adults (not nearly enough) – apart from graphic novels which isn’t the way I see my work going. Other than writing my own books to illustrate, and then trying to get them published (yeah right), I don’t know which way to go. Then I get caught up in my own little dilemma about whether it’s right to put my images in people’s heads when they should be forming their own from the text… but that’s another post for another day.

So, I’m hoping these next few weeks will give me time and head space to at least think about where my work is going, even if I can’t actually make any.

The wonders of pine resin

Here’s my first experiment using pine resin as an aquatint. It’s too dark at the moment but I was quite pleased with it for a first attempt. I ground the powder from quite large lumps using a somewhat crude mortar and pestle, if you can call it that. Can’t remember what beach the stone came from but it was most probably Welsh.

The texture of the aquatinted area is uneven and rather crazed in places which may be because I’ve not put enough resin on or because the powder isn’t fine enough. This is something I’ll be able to experiment with to get different textures and tones. I’m not a huge fan of even tone in my own work; I quite like a bit of chaotic texture and foul biting going on, so I think this rather basic method of grinding my own powder and dusting it on using an old pair of tights is going to suit me rather well.

Now, where’s my burnisher…

The Undertaker's Sisters-in-Law

And here they are in their final state, out in the world.

Bitterne Sugar Lift

The sisters are just about finished – I think – so image will be posted when the ink is dry. IMPACT 6 submission was delivered today; two weeks to wait to see if I’ve been selected. Work ready to go to Oxmarket Galleries in Chichester next week for exhibition at the end of this month/ beginning of August. Work framed and ready for Hampshire Open Studios in August. It’s all coming together.

Further images for The Undertaker’s Nuptials are just not doing at the moment so I’m experimenting with sugar lift. At the moment, I’m leaving the areas where the ground lifted off the plate open (see above) but although the results are interesting, they’re not giving me the contrasts I want. So on the advice of Arizona Jim, eminent printmaker and all-round good egg, I’ve ordered me some pine resin to use as an aquatint. It arrived today - in big lumps - so pestle and mortar needed first. Or some such. This is going to be fun.

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.