Meandering

Having had a dabble with some paint I went back to the Chessmen.

I decided that part of the problem was the binding I was trying to use.

I liked the square motif that the binding strips left but was struggling with the way they cut into the text. So rethink, keep the squares and ditch the binding.

I used text I'd already written out and the charcoal drawings to make a tiny mock up of a meander book.

I think this works so much better than the original book structure. I've already redone the extra lettering I need, resized and cropped the images and have made printing plates on the laser printer.

I'm going to try using acrylic and see if I can apply some of the colour mixing from last week.

Oh Joy

It's been a funny sort of a week. Having decided to slim down the number of things that I am working on I found I was lacking direction with all of them.

Obvioussolution, add another project into the mix.

I heard about Louise Fletcher's free week-long painting course 'Find your Joy' which was starting last Sunday so I thought I'd give it a try.I was impressed with the quality of the material, the aims (to become less self conscious of what you think others may think of your work and be open to exploring what you enjoy in your art) and the structure of the course.

It is aimed at painters but I thought a change of emphasis for a week couldn't hurt. I did the preliminary extra exercise, and the colour mixing exercise,and the main painting exercises one and two. I was part way through exercise three when it struck me that I was starting each of these tasks trying to think in paint but part way through each, to keep me motivated to finish it, I was starting to try and work out how to turn it into a book, or how to turn the task so that it could be done in print.

So I've decided I'll keep the notes in case I want to come back to it in the future but at the moment I'm bowing out at exercise three.It wasn't the course and I've learned some valuable colour mixing stuff that's definitely a transferable skill. As a freebie I was very impressed with it and would recommend it to painters.

But I think I found out my Joy isn't in paint. It is in print and books.

More Monoprints

Just a small selection of the results from the experiments I've been trying this week.

I've been doing some more with acrylics

And with printing ink, using gum arabic transfer for the details.

These are a bit gaudy. The strong colour and the mis alignment in registration reminds me of old school readers from the 1960's.

I rather like the more subtle colours that offset onto the laser print which I used for the liner work

Not sure where I'm going next.

Acrylic monoprints

Book making and monoprinting, I'm finding my way into this at last

I scanned and laser printed some of the tonal drawings and had a go at printing them in acrylic using a gelli plate. It worked. This time I made sure I wrote notes on how to do it.

I kept the paint covered laser prints to use for collage but decided to make a book with them instead. I re did the Claire van Vliet binding from a few weeks ago. I thought the squares that the binding strips make echoed the chess board.

I liked it so much I decided to make another one using the monoprints.

This time, to make them a different weight, I used thin card to make the covers.

I don't know if I'll stick with this structure but it works well to bind the experiments.