More prelims

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I’m working on a preliminary series of 4 reduction monotypes. These are not final pieces; they’re stages on the way of deciding what works and what adaptations are needed before I do the final pieces. Unusually, I’m working from photographs as my starting point. I’ve taken a photo of one of the graffiti-covered industrial ruins in the Lower Swansea Valley and I’ve digitally merged it with a drawing I did from a photo I took a couple of years ago. I’m working on incorporating my own graffiti into the pieces but I’m a long way from perfecting it yet. Graffiti lettering is much harder than I was anticipating and it’s also difficult to render in the medium, reduction monotype, where I’m working with negative space using a cotton bud to remove the ink on the plate. But I’m getting there.

I used black litho/relief ink mixed 60:40 with thick plate oil ontop a perspex 12″ square plate printed onto a creamy T.H. Saunders hand made paper, around 140gsm, using cotton buds (Q Tips), scrim, cotton rags, cocktail sticks (toothpicks) and wooden kebab skewers to do the mark-making.

Princess Pea

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I spent several happy hours at a friend’s smallholding today, up a mountain, out in the fresh air and sunshine, shovelling horse manure! I also hung around while she fed her delightful pea fowl. Most of them are adults but there is one little chick. I’ve nicknamed her Princess Pea.  The adults are huge; Princess Pea is about the size of a Sunday roast chicken. Her parents have elegant headresses but hers is like a stubby Mohican! It was great to have a chance to draw birds up close; for me it emphasises their dinosaur-like qualities. They’re not easy to draw though; like other birds, they don’t stop moving and speed sketching is unavoidable.

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After a while they became very agitated and started making a strange sound that they use to warn of predators.  I suppose that predators would stare at them like I do. I’ve found that dogs don’t like me drawing them either, probably because of the staring, but I’ve yet to find a cat that was bothered. Drawn into my Laura Ashley cloth-bound A5 sketchbook with a Faber Castell Drawing pen size S in sepia.

Big Banners

oppsFor the past few weeks, I’ve spent a couple of afternoons at a local drugs project, working with service users and volunteers to make banners for their Open Day. They’ve been on a series of educational courses and the project wanted banners to reflect this so we started by asking the service users to come up with a list of words that represent their feelings about the programme. We used ‘Achievement; Reachable; Opportunities; Confidence and Purpose’ and also included the name of the programme, ‘Links Coastal’.

I sourced some very cheap rolls of primed canvas, about 2 x 8 feet, in a local cut-price store and Swansea Print Workshop donated a load of used acrylic paints that had been mixed with screenprint medium; this made them very easy to use.We did a practice session on the first afternoon using cheap chalky pastels and sheets of newspaper stuck together and then chose the best designs to reproduce onto the canvas. I really like the results, they should look fab when they’re put up on the project walls.

The Hat Party

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We’re in Bath at a friend’s birthday party. It’s a hat party. His little boy has the best hat. Here it is. Now, let’s party!!!!

Still Trying….

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Just got back from the life drawing session at Swansea Print Workshop and I’m still persevering with digital drawing on my Galaxy Tablet. The first pose took about 40 minutes and the head was a quickie, about 10 minutes. I used the Magic Marker app.

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Prelims

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I spent the afternoon at Swansea Print Workshop, doing some preliminary studies for a small series of work I want to finish by the end of the month. I’ve been doing some sketches and photographs and I developed a working drawing from these. I scanned and printed it out to fit one of my perspex monotype plates and today I inked the plate in a black litho oil-based ink and did a reduction monotype. The photo above shows me drawing into the ink – I’m using scrim there but I also use cotton buds (Q Tips) and cocktail sticks (toothpicks) to make marks.

 

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Once I finished drawing, I dampened a piece of WSH & Co British Handmade Paper and took a print on the giant Radcliffe Press using a collagraph setting. I’m not sure if this paper is still manufactured, the only reference I can find to it online is of a handmade book from 1927. I was given some by a kindly benefactor and I tried it out today. It’s a beautiful wove paper but I think it may have been too textured for this technique; I normally use a very smooth paper like Zercall.

I don’t normally do preliminary prints; I generally work straight from a drawing but the series I’m planning has quite complex imagers so I’m going to press on and do a few more prelim prints to iron out any wrinkles before I start in on the major full-colour monotypes.

Technical Thingy

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Nearly didn’t blog this evening because our box thingy that gives us the Internet has an intermittent fault and Husb has had to connect my tablet to his smartphone so’s I can blog. I haven’t got a clue. I realise that’s terribly sexist but I go through life on a ‘need to know’ basis and if there’s someone else around who has the interest to get on with it, I’ll get on with something else.

I thought I’d have a go at drawing a kitteh on the tablet,using Magic Marker. The advantage of this over conventional materials is that I have quick and easy access to colours and textures which is convenient when I’m drawing something that can’t be relied upon to hold a pose. Here’s Ming the Merciless having a rest on my chair. She moved around a lot; she’s very fidgety.

Husb’s having a row with the Internet providers on Twitter. I pity them lol 🙂

Quick, to the rescue…

Another instalment of this weekly spoof about superheroes in Wales from the acerbic pen of NotsogreatDictator Smith, featuring the Golden Badger of Wrexham dn the Sleeping Giant of Abercraf –

Quick, to the rescue….

Blackberry Vinegar

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Feeling a bit under the weather today so I had a cup of hot blackberry vinegar this evening. Husb and I managed to get a final pick late in September and put the fruit into large jars, packing it down lightly,and covered the fruit with white wine vinegar. After a few days,we strained the fruit through a jelly bag and for each pint of liquid,added a pound of sugar. The whole lot was brought to the boil then immediately poured into warmed clean glass bottles for storage. At the first sign of a cold,put a couple of teaspoonfuls into a cup and top up with hot water. It’s an old cold remedy and very soothing.

Here’s a digital drawing I did when I was out and about earlier,of a couple of street people.

Big Hair And Jimjams

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Husb and I were in Cardiff yesterday to go to the opening of Sarah Hopkins’ new exhibition of screenprints at the Fountain Gallery. As we drove through the city at lunchtime, I spotted this chap out in the street,chatting on his mobile phone in his pajamas. I took a sneaky snap and drew from it with the Magic Marker app on my Samsung Galaxy S8. He has very big hair.