The First Of The New Year

Husb and I popped along to a neighbour’s party a couple of days into the New Year and the Ffynone Mari Lwyd arrived! So I had to have a scribble, didn’t I? She’s a particularly mischievous Mari Lwyd.

The Corn Flour Hack

I’ve seen a few printmakers using this hack on social media to see if their lino block is ready to print. It saves doing a proof print and getting the block inky. I sprinkled cornflour onto the block and scraped it across the lino with a business card (see below) to get the cornflour intoContinue reading “The Corn Flour Hack”

Sketchbook Archives: 51

Looking through my sketchbook archives for November and December 2014, there are a few animals that are not domestic cats. There’s a lion and some lionesses drawn at Folly Farm, a friend’s dog, and some cyanotypes of pigeons that I had sketched years before.

#Caturday: Two Cats And A Horse

There’s an Open Weekend at Swansea Print Workshop coming up (see below) and I’m sorting out some of my work to put on sale. I’ve been doing some little linocut prints onto postcards so I’ll pop these into small frames and sell them at relatively low prices. They are all embellished with chine collé, usingContinue reading “#Caturday: Two Cats And A Horse”

A Mari Lwyd Trio

I carved this Mari Lwyd vinyl block a couple of years ago and now and again I have a bit of a play with it. These three are printed with chine collé, which is a way of adding colour without cutting and printing lots of blocks. I’ve used lovely foils from sweets, there are stillContinue reading “A Mari Lwyd Trio”

A Cyanotype Pigeon

A cyanotype pigeon because…well, why not? The original is a little sketch I did into my sketchbook. I scanned into my computer and reversed it into a negative in Adobe Photoshop. Then I printed it onto a sheet of acetate and used it to make the cyanotype in an exposure unit. I used Bockingford paperContinue reading “A Cyanotype Pigeon”

Sketchbook Archives: 39

February 2014 was a month of mostly digital drawing, and I continued January’s animal theme with these little studies of foxes. Eleven years ago I had rarely seen a fox in the city, now I see loads, along with bats, squirrels, seagulls and birds of prey – kestrels, red kites and occasionally peregrine falcons. We’reContinue reading “Sketchbook Archives: 39”

Mari Lwyd On Fire!

I went to my first pyrography training yesterday and I tried out the technique with one of my Mari Lwyd drawings. It took some getting used to, I made a lot of smoke! But I got the hang of it eventually and started to enjoy it. The technique shows a lot of promise and IContinue reading “Mari Lwyd On Fire!”

Sketchbook Archives: 38

Back to January 2014 for my archives this week, and I did a lot of animal drawings. That’s unusual for me, unless it’s cats and the occasional bird. I don’t normally draw other critters. This was a public drawing event, I like to stick newspapers to walls and draw on them with charcoal. My hairContinue reading “Sketchbook Archives: 38”

Got The Blues…

I tried out some cyanotype prints the other day, when the sun was really strong. I’m not happy with the result, it’s too blue, there’s no white, no contrast. I gave the prints 5 minutes in the sunshine and I think I might have over-exposed them. The instructions on the packet of chemicals were vagueContinue reading “Got The Blues…”