Here’s a blast from the past for this week’s #Caturday Saturday, from 2011. Husb and I had two naughty torties, Bobbit and Ming. They hated each other but had to learn to live together for many years. I drew this just a few weeks before Bobbit died, of very old age. She was very poorly and spent most of her time sleeping. I think that Ming realised and she started climbing onto the settee near Bobbit and purred while Bobbit dozed. It was very sweet really.
Husb and I came back this evening from a nice day out in Newcastle Emlyn to find this young jackdaw in the house. It had flown down a chimney and settled in our back bedroom. It wasn’t hurt, despite having two cats in the house at the time; so much for apex predators! We think it’s a jackdaw because of its “flat head”. I Googled to see if there are any UK superstitions about jackdaws flying down your chimney and guess what? They’re a harbinger of death! Great! AND it’s Friday 13th. A bit too many superstitions for my liking!
I carried on today with the miniprint design I started a few days ago. I transferred it to a block of traditional grey lino and started cutting with my Flexcut tools. There’s a way to go yet. The design has been developed from a photo taken by Husb when our little rescue cat Bill (aka William ChatNoir) was peeping over the edge of the table while we were eating bacon. She loves the smell of bacon.
I was down at Swansea Print Workshop for an hour or so today, preparing some Bockingford paper with cyanotype chemicals for new work I hope to do this weekend. There was a fair bit of the solution left over and I happened to have some white cotton cloth with me, so I soaked the cloth in the chemicals and laid the pieces out to dry on top of layers of newspaper. When I took the dry cloth off, the newspaper was covered with random patterns of cyanotype solution which immediately started changing colour in the light. I snapped a few digital photos quickly, before they darkened (they’re very dark now). I like them, they’re fun, and I also like that the images are ephemeral and now only exist in the digital world. It was a very happy accident. I don’t know what I’ll do with the images, but they’ll go into the mix and come out at a later date no doubt.
I’m teaching a short workshop on linocut printing later this week and I’ve been working on a new design. It’s in Miniprint format, 10 x 10 cms and at that size, it needs to be kept fairly simple, especially for beginners. I’ve started with a photo of our Little Bill, the rescue cat, and shoved it through the Adobe Photoshop “Photocopy” filter. This will be my guide, so I’ll build on this with some drawing before transferring it to lino and carving it.
Husb and I were gallivanting again last evening. That’s a great word, my Nana and her generation would use it all the time, but it seems to have fallen out of use. I think it’s time it came back. Anyway, we were out gallivanting at a gig, so I had to have a scribble, didn’t I? It took me a couple of minutes. This was a very drunk man in a hat.
Here’s an oldie, a woodcut print of Sparta Puss when she was a kitten climbing my net curtain! The little minx 😀 I think this was from about 2011.
I’ve been sorting out my files and I came across some birds I painted in acrylic paint onto clear acetate for a screenprint project a while back, and also a scan of some old fruit netting that I was going to throw away in the rubbish. I’m thinking about how to use them in some new artworks….and I’m thinking cyanotype. Maybe. Something that looks at nature and pollution. Maybe. Let’s have a think.
Here are some Golden Oldies from my sketchbooks in December 2013, I seem to have drawn a lot of rug rats and ankle-biters! I must have been to some family birthday parties, there were a lot of small sprogs in the family 12 years ago!
I’ve done a small series of art on postcards for an exhibition coming up soon. I cut this little lino block a while back, inspired by lyrics from the song “Rise” by the band Public Image Ltd. “Anger Is An Energy” is also the title of John Lydon‘s autobiography. I was in a dark place at the time, it was the pandemic and, hey, I don’t need an excuse to be angry. Anger is a good energy for getting things done.
I cut the block from traditional brown lino, and printed it onto recycled confectionary foils using the chine collé method, with Cranfield Caligo Safewash relief ink in black.
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