I’ve seen this trick on social media, using cornflour to take a look at a carved lino block, to see if it’s ready or needs more cutting. This is the first time I’ve tried it and it works! Yeah! I can see one or two bits on the cat block where I might do a bit more cutting and I think I’ll do a bit more on the bucket that the tree is standing in. Then onto the printing!
I just used normal kitchen cornflour and it worked a treat.
I popped into Waterstones Café in Swansea today, having a quiet half hour, sitting quietly drinking tea and scribbling away. I used the continuous line technique with some cross-hatching using a ballpoint pen into an A6 sketchbook.
These are the first two scribbles I did in my sketchbook on Samhain / Halloween. I should have posted them first, I guess, not last. It takes a while to warm up so I usually do a couple of very quick ones at the start of a session.
I transferred my portrait drawing to a block of traditional grey lino this week, carved it and took the first proof print from it. I’m quite pleased with the resule. I’m being very strict with time and I did this process from the first pencil mark on paper, through 9 drawings, carving the block and a first proof in 4 hours. The longest bit was doing the drawings from life. I used Cranfield Caligo Safewash Relief ink in black onto Liber Charta 145gsm paper, printed with a Columbian Press at Swansea Print Workshop.
I managed to get a fair few scribbles last weekend on Samhain / Halloween at the Elysium gig, in between headbanging and interesting conversations.
The line-up featured Root Zero, Grindhorse 83, Pyrogaric and headliners Adfeilion. I bought a vinyl album by Adfeilion and have been listening to it, it’s fab.
I’ve got a community arts teaching session coming up this week, we’ll be doing Xmas / Winter-themed lino cuts. I’m getting one prepared in advance, I’ve drawn the design onto a piece of traditional grey lino, ready to cut. This traditional material is made from linseed oil, pine resin and wood flour onto a jute backing, so it’s natural, renewable and bio-degradable. It also smells lovely 😀 I’ll start cutting before the session and finish it there. We’ll be printing the following week.
More from the gig on Samhain at Elysium. The headline band, Adfeilion played a very atmospheric set. I scribbled away in my sketchbook but to be honest, I got right drawn into the music and ended up headbanging…hurt like heck the next day! Samhain is also known as Halloween and in Welsh, it’s Nos Calan Gaeaf.
Husb and I went to a fab gig on Halloween / Samhain at Elysium. The line up was great, Root Zero, Grindhorse 83, Pyrogaric and Adfeilion headlining. There were a lot of women, both performing and in the audience. I had a scribble of course. Makes a change sketching women’s legs at a heavy gig, it’s usually full of men in short trousers and big boots.
Last week I did a series of portrait drawings at Swansea Print Workshop’s Life Drawing Group. I chose the best likeness, the last drawing as it happened, and I transferred it to a block of traditional grey lino and then started carving. The drawings took 2.5 hours, the transfer about 15 minutes and so far I’ve spent an hour and a quarter on the carving. I reckon I have another 15-30 minutes on cutting and then I’ll be ready to take a proof print.
It seems I was doing a lot of digital drawings of SpartaPuss back in December 2014. She’s a five year old here. I’ve drawn her with a free Markers app onto my Samsung Galaxy Note 8 tablet. I liked that app very much but there came a point where I lost interest in digital drawing and went back to “real life” sketching and put the tablet away. Husb found it the other week when he was decluttering. He fired it up and it still works, so I might give it another go.
scribblah 