The glamorous life of an artist – not! Recycling canvasses with gesso. There’s a lot of prep and hard work before anything ends up on a gallery wall.
Tag Archives: recycling
A Crafty Afternoon
19 Mar
I work a few hours a week for a charity that supports homeless people, teaching crafts and fine art. Today I had a crafty afternoon. I try to make the craft sessions relevant to people, making practical things that they can use in their new home when they get housed. We recycled plastic drinks bottles – around 1.5 litre capacity and, with gardener’s jute twine, we made macramé herb bottles that people can hang up in their kitchens. I bought a selection of supermarket living herbs – coriander, parsley and basil. Here’s one I did as a demonstration and here it is below as a snake-like work in progress.
Man Engine
12 Apr
Back last week I was rummaging through the drawers in my plans chest and pulled out some used paper that I thought could be reused and today I got my chance. Swansea hosted Man Engine , the largest mechanical puppet ever constructed in Britain, which has been journeying up from Cornwall. It’s amazing. I was invited to take part in a live drawing event (with afternoon tea) at Galerie Simpson on Swansea’s High Street to coincide with the behemoth’s progress through the city. It’s very slow moving so I managed to sketch the giant head outside the gallery on the pavement as it rumbled by. I drew with black, white and sanguine conté crayon and some of my home-made sepia walnut ink onto a recycled cyanotype print on Bockingford paper. If you want to know how to make walnut ink, please check out my blog post here.
More Rummaging
3 Apr
I had another rummage through the big drawers in my plans chest and found some more lovely papers that I’d used but didn’t do anything more with. This is a piece of paper stretched and gessoed then painted at random with my home-made walnut ink. I had taken it out on my journeys around Wales hunting megaliths and started drawing some ancient stone monuments on it, but I didn’t like the way it was going so stuck it in a drawer and forgot about it. Now, what am I going to do with it?
Recycle, Reuse
1 Apr
I have some very big drawers for storing art and materials and I was rummaging through them earlier and found a load of papers that had been shoved to the back because I wasn’t happy with the work I’d done on them. So I pulled them out to have a think about how I can reuse them. This was a cyanotype experiment that hadn’t worked out and I already tried to recycle it by doing a life drawing on top, but I didn’t like that either. So now I’m going to try again – third time lucky? I don’t know what I’ll do yet, maybe I’ll have a digital play with it before deciding. It’s looming out at me quite darkly ………..
New Old Thing
6 Oct
Day 5 of the 40 Day Drawing Challenge and I scribbled this little ceramic mustard pot that I picked up for a £1 in a second-hand shop earlier this week. I drew this on my Samsung Galaxy Note 8 tablet with a basic free app called Markers. I saved the drawing several times as I went along and the slides below show the different stages.
At The Bus Stop
7 Mar
I had a bit of a scribble when I was waiting for the bus yesterday. I had 10 minutes or so to kill and that’s enough for a bit of street drawing. A while back I finished all the pages in my leather steampunk sketchbook so I replaced the pages with scraps of paper left over from other art projects. The paper here is a piece of Somerset that I’d initially squeegeed with a browny grey acrylic screenprinting medium the screenprinted in with some of my sketchbook drawings and photographs. I use these papers for mixed media work but this bit was left over and too good to throw away. I drew the street scene with a black Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen, size F.
Random Faces In Random Places
17 Nov
It isn’t glamorous, being an artist. It’s a constant slog. Underpinning my art practice is a daily routine of just that, practice. And at the heart of that practice is simple drawing, usually in sketchbooks. I draw anybody, anywhere, at every opportunity. Random faces in random places.
I have a new piece of art in this exhibition in Cardiff. Please drop by if you’re in the area 🙂
Recycled Sketchbook
9 Nov
I’ve had this handmade leather Steampunk style sketchbook for ages and used up all the paper a while ago. Its simple design meant that I could remove its innards and replace them with new (old) paper. I have loads of bits of paper left over from drawing or printmaking projects, some plain, some covered with ink or some sort of print or even squeegeed acrylic or cyanotype. I cut the leftovers down to fit and reassembled the sketchbook. Bob’s your uncle!
I did some scribbles en plein air at an event in Swansea’s Castle Square, the city meeting place, a few weeks ago. It was organised to offer positive support to refugees in the area.
The grey/white pages on the right are recycled bits of Somerset paper that had been squeegeed with Daler Rowney acrylic screen-printing medium and overprinted with a photoscreen image in white. I’ve been trying out some new UniBall pens – Uni Pins – and they work really well on the plain white paper, but a bit less so on the bits squeegeed with acrylic which dragged a bit.
I have a new piece of art in the Womens Arts Association exhibition, opening on Saturday 11th November. Please pop by and take a look if you’re in Cardiff
Pasta Print Perfect!
2 Jul
Pasta Maker Printing Press
The tabletop pasta maker had it’s first trial as a mobile printing press today. RESULT!!!!! It worked beautifully. It’s taken ages to renovate because we had stored it in a really damp cupboard and it was badly rusted, but WD40, patience and elbow grease did the job.
Here’s how I recycled it…………….
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- Cutting paper drypoint plate to size
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- Drawing onto paper drypoint plate with drawing pen
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- Scratching the lines into the plate surface with a drypoint tool
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- Cutting Bockingford paper to size
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- Soaking the paper, about an hour will do
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- Wipe away the ink drawing, don’t use a wet cloth, just slightly damp!
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- Cutting press blankets from felted wool to just fir into the press
First, I cut a piece of Intaglio Printmaker’s paper drypoint etching plate and then I redrew a little drawing of a hare onto it, from one of my sketchbooks, using a Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen, size S. Thirdly, I scratched over the linework with my drypoint tool, just breaking the surface of the plastic coating. Then I cut and soaked some small pieces of Bockingford before removing the pen drawing with a very lightly dampened piece of cotton wool. Finally I cut some pieces of felted wool to be used as tiny blankets for the pasta press.
Inking up the drypoint plate ………..
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- Using special drypoint ink , an oil-based one from Intaglio Printmakers
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- Softening the ink on a recycled marble inking slab
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- Using a rubber squeegee to apply ink to plate
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- Using an old business card, or recylcle a credit card, to remove excess ink
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- Don’t remove too much ink, it’s easy to rub too hard
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- Clean the edges with a rag and check the back too
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- Drain the paper – I used ‘toaster’ tongs – repurposed what I had in the kitchen
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- Blotting with kitchen roll and a cheap roller (brayer)
I put a blob of Intaglio Printmaker’s Drypoint Mix oil–based etching ink onto my inking block (a recycled bit of marble from an old fireplace) and picked some up with a mini rubber squeegee. I squeegeed the ink across the little drypoint plate then removed the excess, firstly with the edge of an old business card and then with a piece of tissue paper, taking care not to take too much off. Finally I wiped the edges with a rag, cleaned my hands and blotted a piece of the soaked Bockingford paper.
Making a blanket sandwich …….
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- First layer, one of the felt blankets
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- Second layer, a clean piece of tissue
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- Third layer, the blotted Bockingford paper
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- Fourth layer, the inked plate, face down
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- Fifth layer, another piece of clean tissue
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- Sixth layer, the second felt blanket
On top of one of the first blanket I laid a clean piece of tissue paper, then the blotted Bockingford and then placed the drypoint plate, inky side down, then another layer of tissue and finally the second blanket.
Taking the print ……..
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- Grip the blanket sandwich firmly so none of the pieces move
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- Feed it into the machine and turn the handle
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- Carefully peel away the layers of the blanket sandwich and here’s your little drypoint print.
I picked up the blanket sandwich very carefully and firmly, making sure none of the layers slipped and rested the bottom edge onto the rollers in the pasta press. I turned the handle with one hand while keeping a tight grip on the blanket sandwich with the other. Once it was through, I peeled away the layers and voila! A teeny little etching.
These paper drypoint plates make an edition of 10 or so etchings before wearing out. I think I might try some hand colouring on these little hares, with my Winsor & Newton Artist’s Watercolours.
Here Be Dragons
Please click on this link, ‘Here Be Dragons’ to see a short film about my giant wood cut which was shown on a recent series on Sky Arts.
To Buy Scribblah’s Art
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What's on
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Shameless! Another shameless plug for the Printopia exhibition of work by members of Swansea Print Workshop at The Seaside Gallery, Volcano, High Street, Swansea. It opens on Thursday 4th July, with cake and nibbles and a pay bar, and continues until 26th July. The Big ‘Un And my great big woodcut, “Here Be Dragons” has […]
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