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Reinventing An Icon: Part 2
I did some research on medieval clothing to try and picture Gwenllian ferch Gruffydd for the flag design I was working on. Unmarried women wore their hair in elaborate braids but as soon as they married, they adopted a veil-like headdress.
Medieval Clothing
Gwenllian was married at 16 so I tried out a few ideas based on a typical headdress of the early 1100s. It didn’t do it for me. I think the medieval clothing erects a barrier between her and us. Heroes and legends are constantly changed, updated, made relevant for each age and I wanted people here and now in the 21st century to identify with her.
Norman Invaders
I wanted to know what she would be like if I could go back in time to meet her. I tried to get to know her, what she was like in real life. She was a woman in her mid-30s when she was murdered by the Norman invaders and a mother of 5. She was great Lady of a castle and an educated and gracious diplomat.
Lived as an Outlaw
She fought for her people and her nation and lived as an outlaw. Although she was recognised as a beauty, she wasn’t young; she was a mature, strong woman with a lot of confidence, someone accessible to modern people, someone we would respond to if we saw her on the street – not someone from the distant and unfamiliar past.
Back to the drawing board ……
Gwenllian was suggested by Christine Moore of the YesCymru Bridgend group as the subject of a fourth flag to be carried on the Independence march in Caernarfon on July 27th organised by AUOB Cymru, a non-party political, non-partisan organisation. The flags and banner have been donated by Charles Ashburner of Grŵp Baner Cymru.
And he’s now producing Gwenllian flags….
Reinventing An Icon: Part 1
A couple of weeks ago, local flagmaker Charles Ashburner sent me an email asking if I’d like to get involved in the creation of a new flag. We had met last year when I was working on a commission for the SkyArts TV channel, creating a new artwork – a new flag for Britain that I called “Here Be Dragons“.
Gwenllian ferch Gruffydd
He asked me to develop an image of the historical Welsh heroine, Gwenllian ferch Gruffydd, for the AUOB Cymru (All Under One Banner Wales) march in Caernarfon on July 27th. That wasn’t a lot of time and I nearly said no. But it’s a cause I support so I took a deep breath and said yes and started to research our Welsh warrior princess.
Zena Warrior Princess
So where to start? I found a very interesting little book by Laurel Rockerfeller which gave me the outline of her life but thinking about how to portray her visually was challenging as there are no contemporary drawings and I didn’t want to go down the “Zena Warrior Princess” route (although I love Zena).
Hugh Williams
And although I liked the painting by Hugh Williams from 1909 that’s associated with her, I didn’t want to reproduce that because it has a very Edwardian sensibility and style. I realised that I had to bring her out of the middle ages and rescue her from early 20th century Art Nouveau and bring her bang up to date into the 21st century.
I wondered what she would be like if I could pop into the Tardis with Doctor Who and travel back in time to meet her …… with my pencil and sketchbook …..
….to be continued ….
Scribbling Yes Cymru
Husb and I endured eleven hours on a coach with the smelliest toilets in the universe on Saturday to get to and from the YES Cymru march in Caernarfon. It was amazing! Over 8,000 people crammed into the tiny cobbled streets and little market square, enjoying the party atmosphere and listening to inspiring speakers. It was a great crowd and of course, I had to have a scribble! Our coach from Swansea picked up the Llanelli / Carmarthen posse that included a bunch of lads who rocked the Welsh costume – here’s one of them in a rather fetching mini-skirted version.
And a few faces in the crowd…..
….including Lloyd-George modelling an ANNIBYNIAETH banner!
And I did a quick sketch of Scottish speaker and supporter Hardeep Singh Kohli as he sat and waited for his turn behind the ever-moving flags and legs. He was hilarious and such a fervent supporter of Scottish … and Welsh … independence.
I’m still recovering from the travel sickness. But it was worth it.
The Rainbow Roll
Colour
It’s been years since I did a rainbow roll to put colour into the background of a block print. I’ve been trying out proof prints for my “Streambed” vinyl block and that’s how I ended up doing a rainbow roll. I put out three lumps of Caligo Safewash litho/relief ink – Process Blue on the right, Extender in the middle and Process Blue with Process Yellow on the left and then I rolled them very carefully in one direction until they were blended, with a dark blue merging through an almost-white to green. The colours are very strong and I remembered that I should have used far more Extender and less pigment.
Masking
I needed to mask out the edge of the coloured area so I ripped a hole in a sheet of newspaper to form a stencil and put it over the rainbow roll.
Strength
Then I put a piece of Japanese Hosho paper on top of it and rubbed with a baren. The result is reasonable, but I think the pigment is too strong, I need to add far more extender to the colours to make them paler and more translucent. Finally, I overprinted with my “Streambed” block in a black oil-based litho/relief ink from Intaglio Printmaker in London. I like it, it’s different.
The FIRE Lab
I based this block on an original sketch I did with colleagues from the FIRELab project at the Zoology Department at Swansea University. Here’s one of the FIRE Lab’s blogs, talking about uses for the saliva of The Tench (it’s a fish).
Doubling Up
Carrying on experimenting with my vinyl block based on a drawing of a streambed, I printed it up twice in black litho/relief ink onto Hosho paper. I like the negative spaces between the two shapes. This merits some development, I think. I have been developing this work in response to field trips with colleagues from Swansea University’s FIRE Lab.
A Tryout In Colour
After I had done the first proof of my vinyl block in black ink, I decided to try out some colour. My first experiment was with some simple chine collé using silk fabric papers, using colours I had seen in the stream bed and landscape. Unfortunately we’re in the middle of a heatwave and my stick of UHU glue had gone really gummy and made it difficult to stick the silk paper to the Hosho satisfactorily, so I just did the one proof.
My block is based on an original sketch that I made on a field trip with colleagues from the Swansea University FIRE Lab, up in the Brecon Beacons back in May.
Proofing The Stream Bed
A few weeks ago I went on a field trip up into the Brecon Beacons with colleagues from Swansea University’s FIRE Lab and while they studied the environment in culverts, I sketched. I really liked the abstraction of this drawing of a stream bed so I cut it into a block of vinyl and today finally started doing some proof prints down at Swansea Print Workshop.
I used Intaglio Printmakers’ black litho/relief ink and Japanese Hosho paper. It’s very lightweight because I wanted to take the prints by hand, using a Japanese baren rather than the Victorian Columbian press, lovely though it is.
I’m pleased with it, I love the level of abstraction, which is really out of my comfort zone. Next I’m going to try to incorporate some colour with chine collé, but that will be for tomorrow.
My Geographic Palette #4 – Graphite
The next one out of my geographic palette is graphite, a slightly greasy, slightly soluble solid black pigment and mineral found in The Lake District near Keswick, which is where I bought some nice chunky sticks of it and a whole load of top-quality graphite pencils. Not far from Keswick, at Seathwaite, is an old graphite mine which has been around since the late 16th century until it was abandoned in the late 19th century because cheaper graphite, although of inferior quality, could be imported, mainly from China.
Historically, this very pure graphite was used to mark sheep, still an important local industry. But it was used mostly for moulds to cast coins and cannonballs; it is said that it made such good cannonballs that it gave the British the edge over the French. When warfare moved on, someone had the bright idea of stuffing a thin wooden tube of wood with graphite and this kickstarted the famous pencil industry in Keswick which still has the Derwent factory and Pencil Museum. It’s a fabulous little gem of a museum, so informative and a great place for graphite geeks to hang out. Graphite pencils are a relatively late invention; back in the day, artists drew with charcoal, red lead, silverpoint and chalk.
Using a 6B block of graphite, I drew into my A5 spiral bound Bockingford sketchbook, using both the flat side and pointed tip of the graphite to get different textures. Then I took a watercolour brush dipped in water and rubbed areas of the graphite to create soft washes directly onto the paper. Then, while the paper was still wet, I drew into the damp areas which gave me more lines and textures.
This is based on a sketch I did en plein air on a field trip with colleagues from The FIRE Lab, near the source of the River Tawe. It’s a culvert – I’m falling in love with culverts, who’d have thought it? Please check out the FIRE Lab blog here – it’s a good read.
My Geographic Palette #3 – Walnut Ink
About 3 or 4 years now some friends gave me a bag of fresh walnuts – that’s walnut fruit – the nut is in the centre of an apple sized green fruit. I made my own walnut ink from them, please click here if you want to see the technique I used.
Anyway, I used it to work up a painting using ink washes of different intensity based on one of my original sketches of culverts way up in the Brecon Beacons. I was on a field trip with colleagues from The FIRE Lab a few weeks ago and I’m using those sketches to develop a new body of artwork.
The ink looks lovely when it dries out – it rehydrates as well so it doesn’t go to waste.
The FIRE Lab has some great blog posts, check out this one about the technology of the Tawe Path walk.
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