Today I printed up the woodcut I carved out earlier in the week. I used Intaglio Printmaker’s Caligo Easy Wash Relief ink mixed 50:50 with Extender and took the print by hand on Hosho paper using a Japanese Baren. This self-portrait was inspired by the late, great Käthe Kollwitz, an artist who produced loads of self-portraits during her long career. That’s a very dark gaze I’ve got going on there!
Today was the first day of a course I’m teaching at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, linked to the excellent Käthe Kollwitz exhibition. We spent some time drawing from her work before going back into the studio to develop drypoint plates and woodblocks inspired by her prints. I drew directly onto a paper drypoint plate with a fineline pen, studying a small section of her etching ‘Raped’ from 1908, a few square inches around a foot and some sunflowers. It is incredibly complicated and detailed, the entire etching must have taken her ages to do. I love to study from the great masters, you learn so much. Once I was happy with the drawing on the plate, I started to incise the lines with the low-tech tool I made – a four inch screw and some masking tape. Cheap as well. Tomorrow we print!
Coming up in August – I’m running a weekend printmaking workshop inspired by Frank Brangwyn , one of my artistic heroes. An outstanding draughtsman, painter, printmaker, muralist who exhibited with the Viennese Secession but unlike Klimt and Schiele, Frank had the mis/fortune to live to a ripe old age and fall out of fashion; he’s due for a reappraisal and revival.
I am involved in a large immersive arts project that’s climaxing in September called Nawr yr Arwr / Now the Hero, the brainchild of artist Marc Rees, which is centred around the magnificent Brangwyn Hall in Swansea, which houses the beautiful Brangwyn panels. As part of the lead up to the final act, I’ll be running a two day print course at Swansea Print Workshop, inspired by Frank’s panels and the remembrance of World War 1 (he was a war artist too).
Here’s a short film about me, my model, my monotype and Nawr Yr Arwr / Now The Hero
And if you want to see more about the monotype technique I use, please visit the Techie section of my website, here.
This screenprint represents a very specific slice of time. Some years ago, there was a Woolworths store opposite the Waterstones bookshop in Swansea. I used to sit in the window of the bookshop cafe up on the first floor, with a pot of tea, and scribble the pigeons that sat on the Woolworths signage opposite. It was large and red and stood out from the wall, giving the pigeons enough space to sit and groom themselves comfortably. It was also lit up day and night, which gave them warmth.
I found the pigeons hard to draw because they constantly fidget so I had to develop a quick impressionistic style to capture them. I wrote down my thoughts and combined them with some of the drawings to create the photographic silkscreen.
The Cheese Has Landed! I entered one of those Facebook competitions a few weeks ago. You know the ones, you click on ‘Like’ and share the page and you’re entered into a prize draw. Well, this was with the Welsh Cheese Company and if there’s one thing that I like more than almost anything else in the world … almost …. it’s cheese. So I clicked and shared and a couple of weeks later they got in touch to tell me that I’ve won fifty quid’s worth of cheese! Not just any old cheese either, but the nation’s finest.
So I was working today and spent the evening with some of our extended family and we ate loads of cheese. And I didn’t do any art but now I’m stuffed full of cheese. And I’m so happy, being stuffed full of cheese 😀
I’ve been flicking through some of my old sketchbooks again, finding things I’d forgotten about. There are quite a lot of drawings of sprogs.
They’re weird little creatures to draw, looking simultaneously like aliens and cartoons.
I had a fab evening out last week, up The Workers, a lovely gallery in the village of Ynyshir in the Rhondda Valley. On the first Thursday of each month, they host an evening of Words, Arts and Music (WAM) and I was part of it this month. I did a talk about my work, mainly the en plein air pieces I did in collaboration with prehistorian Dewi Bowen, who’s been researching his new book, and filmmaker Melvyn Williams.
Dewi did an illustrated talk about ancient monuments in the area around Rhondda and Melvyn premiered the new film he’s made of me and Dewi on our creative journey across South Wales. Here’s the film below. People in the audience seemed to find it funny, especially the bits of me suffering for my art!!!
I started a selfie today, a self portrait woodcut, using a piece of plywood. I transferred my drawing onto the wood and commenced hacking away with my Flexcut tools, they’re pretty good but plywood is quite tough and takes some effort.
I did a rubbing, with tracing paper and a graphite block, as I cut, to keep tabs on how it was progressing. Tomorrow I’ll do a first proof print to see exactly what’s going on and then finish the cutting, if necessary.
I’ve been flipping through old sketchbooks, reminding myself of work I’d forgotten about. I came across a cluster of heads in one that I’d bought from the Tate gallery in London. Nice sketchbook. I like drawing heads and faces, but children’s faces are so difficult. The younger they are, the more they look like an alien life form. There’s a mixture of media here, graphite, charcoal pencil, Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen and biro (ballpoint).
I work part-time for a charity for people who are homeless, delivering art and craft sessions in different venues across the city. It’s much easier to engage people in crafts than in fine art, crafting seems to be more accessible and less threatening. I try out different things to motivate people who don’t think that they can paint or draw or sculpt to engage with art. I recently ordered a stencil book, bought in some small square canvasses and did a quick little stencil painting during today’s session. It certainly attracted a lot of attention.
I used a stencil brush to put on the basic image in black acrylic (Liquitex Heavy Body) and while it was drying I cleaned the stencil on a piece of blue kitchen towel with a wet-wipe. I really like the ethereal image that appeared on the towel. Then I added some brush strokes in light blue and orange to give it a 1960s Pop Art feel. It was very quick and showed people how they could think about using stencils and paint to create artwork for their new homes. It also taught people quite a bit about how to use paint, without them realising it. I’m not a big fan of painting but I really like the Liquitex, it’s very strongly pigmented and can be thinned out to use in translucent washes, as with the stripes, or used fairly impasto, as I did with the stencil.
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