Tag Archives: Japanese paper

The Beautiful Machine

31 Dec

sewing 1

A while back, I had a small rubber stamp made up from a silkscreen print I did based on the fabulous Frida Kahlo, an artist I admire very much. I printed it onto small leftover pieces of a beautiful Japanese Shiohara paper that I had been using for another print job.

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I had been wondering what to do with them and I finally decided on making them up into a self-contained installation that I will be building over the next week.The first stage is to make them more robust  – the Shiohara is a lightweight tissue and won’t take a lot of handling. However, it’s also a well-made natural fibre paper and can be sewn so I made a start by sewing them onto a very robust handmade paper – 300gsm – that I’d bought at the Tate Gallery a few years ago. I’d been wondering what to do with that as well! They really suit each other.

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I’m sewing them on an antique Singer sewing machine. It’s Edwardian and dates from around 1904 and it’s a great piece of mechanical engineering as well as being extremely beautiful. It’s so finely balanced, it’s a joy to use. I’ll be carrying on with this in a couple of days, after the holiday.

So a very happy New Year to everyone, I really appreciate you looking in at my blog. Blwyddyn Newydd Dda i chi gyd.

 

 

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Cake, Tea, Art

13 Dec
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The opening crowd at The SPace spied through my developing installation using my new rubber stamp and some Shiohara paper.

After three weeks of painting, cleaning, drilling, humping furniture, doing risk assessments, form filling, dealing with bureaucracy, getting rained on, labelling and putting artwork onto walls and into browsers, Swansea’s newest artspace, The SPace, formally opened with a Welsh tea on Friday evening.

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Some of my artwork, silkscreen prints and drawings, on the left. My work is available for sale through Artfinder, please click the link on my blog or search for Rosie Scribblah on Artfinder

It was great! Such a lovely atmosphere, lots of really lovely people, gorgeous art, Swansea Print Workshop’s new book (fully illustrated and a snip at £9.95), Welsh teatime delicacies bara brith and Welsh cakes, along with jammy tarts, chocolate brownies (gluten-free), mince pies, vol-au-vents (retro!), cheesy biscuits and lashings of tea and a spot of mulled wine as well. Lovely.

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Home-made Welsh teatime treats

It’s an offshoot of Swansea Print Workshop; a temporary collective of 14 of our members getting The SPace together for 12 weeks in a property owned by Coastal Housing Group at 217 High Street. The SPace is open Wednesdays to Saturdays, 11.30 – 5.00 between now and mid-February. Please pop in and see us if you’re in the city, or visit us at Swansea Print Workshop’s Facebook group here.

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Get Over Yourself

3 Dec

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I recently had a rubber stamp made from a screen print I did a few months back (here) and tried it out today for the first time on some leftover pieces of lovely Shiohara paper. It came out like, well, a rubber stamp. Being a geeky and rather obsessive printmaker, I of course wanted it to be absolutely perfect, like a lino block through a fine Victorian Columbian press.

 

Then I got over myself! A rubber stamp is a completely different animal and the effect of stamping gives a very different finish to a press. And then I started enjoying myself, stamping away. I hung them to dry on my clothes airer, using plastic pegs and cotton wool pads. I’m not sure what I’ll do with them – maybe a 3D piece?

I did it at The SPace, a temporary artspace by Swansea Print Workshop at 217, High Street, Swansea. Open 11.30 – 5.00, Wednesdays to Saturdays until mid-February.

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The Final Cut

15 Jul

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I spent this afternoon down at Swansea Print Workshop, printing the first colour of a series of reduction linocuts I’m making for a forthcoming exhibition at Oriel Ceri Richards at the Taliesin Arts Centre next month. There will be 12 linocuts in all and although I’ve started printing them, I had one left to cut ……. so I quickly drew it and made the first cuts this evening, ready for printing tomorrow.

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I’m using a small, square vinyl ‘softcut’ by Intaglio Printmakers and a Faber Castell Pitt pen to draw the image. I use Flexcut tools for the cutting.

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The softcut is very easy to use but not suitable for fine, controlled work. It’s great for my expressionist approach though and prints well onto the fine Japanese paper I’m using.

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Hares And Colombians

3 Mar

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I’ve been doing a lot of drawings from British wildlife photos and I’ve started to cut little lino blocks from them. I’ll be taking these to Swansea Print Workshop soon to ink them up and print them on the old Columbian Press, one of my favourite pieces of machinery. I’ll probably use an oil-based relief/litho ink in black onto a white Japanese paper and limit the editions to 30 or 40 each.

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Here’s a Colombian, isn’t it lush? The one at the print workshop dates from 1855. I love antique machinery and tools.

Colombian Press

 

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