Some more scribbles from my sketchbooks, this time from December 2013 when I seemed to be sitting in a lot of places with other people just sitting.
Sketchbook Archives: 36 – Just Sitting
Rubbing The Cat With Graphite!
I carried on today with the miniprint design I started a few days ago, using my smallest Flexcut tools. I put a piece of tracing paper over the lino and rubbed it hard with graphite block to see if I’d cut away everything I wanted to. I also gave the lino block a rub with the graphite, to see what’s there. I think I’m ready to do a proof print now. 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.
A Bit Surreal
Here are the other happy accidents I made at Swansea Print Workshop in the week. These are pages of newspapers that I put underneath some cloths soaked in cyanotype chemicals to dry. Once I took them out of the dark room, the colours began to change and I took a digital photo at a particularly pleasing phase. Images created out of randomness are in keeping with the tradition of Surrealism, whose artists often gained inspiration from random images.
Who knows where these may lead me?
#Caturday Archives: 21
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.
Too Many Superstitions!
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!
The Smell Of Bacon.
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.
A Happy Accident…
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.
A New Design for Lino
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.
Out Gallivanting – Again
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.
#Caturday Archives: 20
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.
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