I’ve been pretty slack about sketching for a while now. I used to scribble every day, but since Covid I’ve slacked off and I’m a bit mad with myself for it. So I’m going to try to do a 2 minute sketch daily, from newspapers. Come on, two minutes a day should be achievable???!!!! We’ll see. Here’s the first – two minutes tops!
Twelve years ago I was lucky to be able to visit Iceland, the country not the food store! I know this is a cliche, but it’s a magical place full of strange light and landscapes.
I’ve reached November 2012 in my sketchbook archives, just over a year since I started this blog to put my sketches out there into the world. It’s difficult to show sketchbooks, yet they underpin the work of many artists.
This month it was mostly people with a few crows – I think they were crows but they could have been some other crow-ish birds.
I’ve been doing a lot of Gelli Plate printing lately and I’ve ended up with lots of prints, mainly from botanicals – leaves, grasses, flowers etc… They’re nice to look at but don’t really stand up as artworks in their own right. So I’ve been reusing them. Yesterday I posted badges I’ve made with some. Today I’ve been developing collages. Here are some sections of them, showing the overlay of ripped pieces of Gelli prints, and some reused cyanotypes as well. I’ll be building text from these tiny scraps over the next few days.
I’ve been doing a lot of teaching and demonstrations recently and I’ve collected lots of Gelli Plate prints using leaves, and some graphite rubbings as well. I’ve an art and craft fair coming up on December 7th and I thought I’d use the gel prints to make unique and original badges
They’re very shiny and pretty, it’s hard to believe that some of them are plants! I’ll have other things to sell, but it’s always good to have some pocket-money / stocking-filler items.
What’s going on here then? I’m getting a few things ready for next weekend’s art and craft fair at GS Artists on Swansea’s High Street. It’s on Saturday December 7th, 11 – 5pm and it will be filled with goodies from local artists and makers. I’ll show you what the mystery object is when I finish it tomorrow 😀
This #Caturday Saturday, my silhouette of our little Bill is on top of some paper I printed up a few years ago, before Covid! I cut random shapes from vinyl and printed them, again at random, with overlays of Cranfield Safewash oil-based relief inks in the three Primary Process colours – Yellow, Magenta and Cyan. Where the translucent colours overlap, you can see Secondary colours – green, purple and orange.
I didn’t like the coloured print when I did it, I was aiming for something more subtle, but I think it works against the dark silhouette and forms a psychedelic background.
When people see something in an art gallery or a craft fair, it can be easy to think that the artist / maker has just gone “Bish Bash Bosh” and there it is. Bit there’s usually a lot of preparation that goes into making a work of art or craft.
I’m going to be making small baskets from old prints that didn’t work out and the starting point is to cut the prints into strips. The paper that we printmakers use is lovely, often made from cotton rag, and it can be squished until it’s flexible enough to work with.
Some more archive sketches from October 2012, out and about with architecture, people and pigeons. I like pigeons, they’re happy and chubby little creatures. Not easy to draw though because they fidget so much. It was only 11 years ago but we have far more seagulls in the city now and far fewer pigeons. I miss the pigeons, they didn’t steal food from people’s hands. There are a couple of travel drawings too, from Tenby and Nottingham.
I don’t often do crafting, but I’ve been invited to share a table at GS Artist‘s Christmas Craft Fair (December 7th, 11-5) so I’ve got to get cracking. Here’s the start of a little basket made from recycled prints and wool.
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