Double Trouble for #Caturday. A collage I did of our new-ish rescue kitty, William Chatnoir (Bill for short). Now she’s settled in, got her paws under the table, she’s a little troublemaker. Like the rest of them! Wouldn’t be without her though xxx
Pulled a couple of long sessions down at Swansea Print Workshop yesterday and this evening to finish these two before the deadline tomorrow – linocut on the left and screenprint on the right. Was supposed to do them last week but had an accident and got concussion! Never mind, all done.
Now I need a nice cup of tea and to bed!
I’m cutting a lot of text, back to front, into traditional grey lino for my latest print. It’s not easy so I regularly use tracing paper to check that I’m doing it right.
I put the tracing paper onto the area I want to check and rub it with a block of 2B Graphite so I can see what’s been cut and what hasn’t.
I was at the Riverside folk club the other evening and scribbled away in my sketch book. This performer was deeply focused, very wrapped up in performing. I used a 2B Koh-i-Noor graphite block into a square Khadi handmade paper sketchbook.
This guy was a hoot at the Riverside Folk Club the other evening. No refined refrains for him, straight into some robust renditions of saucy songs.
Sometimes I just want to draw for the sheer joy of it. Some people love to sing, or to run as fast as they can. I love to draw. I was at the Riverside folk club the other evening and scribbled away in my sketch book. I often draw musicians and audiences at music events, the folk club crowd tend to be a bit more sedate than the headbangers, so I can spend more time on the drawings. I used a 2B Koh-i-Noor graphite block into a square Khadi handmade paper sketchbook.
Last week I did 3 versions of my drawing of Miner’s Wives confronting the police (1984/85) onto Mark Resist film (see below). Today I chose the fine line drawing on the right to develop with Indian Ink and brushes. There’s still a lot to do before I expose it onto a photo-sensitised screen but I feel like I’m on my way now. I’m thinking of adding another police officer on the left and a couple more shadowy ones in the bus window.
I really like the haphazard way the ink washes spread randomly on the film. I can also work back into the inked areas like hair with a cocktail stick, scraping detail into it.
I’ve started cutting into the lino block about the Miner’s Wives that I have been designing for what seems like ages! I really want to get this right, though. It contains a lot of text, which is really hard to cut, especially backwards. Here are the first cuts.
I’m doing a couple of prints inspired by the Welsh Miner’s Wives in the strikes of 1984-1985. I’ve finalised the content for the linocut and today transferred the drawing and text – backwards – onto a 30×30 cms block of soft grey hessian-backed lino. I sharpened my tools (Flexcut) on the leather slip strop and the little blades glided through the lino like a hot knife through butter, releasing that unmistakeable smell of linseed oil. That’s one of the things I really enjoy about making art, it’s so tactile, it arouses many senses.
Finally, the third version of a screen print transparency I’m making about the glorious South Wales Miner’s Wives from the 1984-1985 strike. It’s based on some pen and ink sketches from contemporary press photos and I’m trying out different materials to redraw the image onto Mark Resist film. This last version is drawn with Faber Castell Pitt drawing pens, which are lightfast, necessary for the photographic screen process. Here are the three versions below.
I need to crack on with this because of a tight deadline, so I’m going to try and combine the best of all three, maybe as a fourth version but more likely, I’ll choose one of these to work into, combining all three drawing materials into a final version ready for transfer to a photo-screen.
scribblah 