More progress

I’ve made more progress on two projects this week 

I scanned the etching plate of ‘Victoria reading’ and used the scan to get an accurate stencil to add colour to her hair by relief rolling on the inked plate.

I decided that black whilst being accurate was too dead so I used a Prussian blue for the intaglio. The hair is a rainbow roll of green (from process cyan and process yellow) moving into a process magenta. It’s the closest I could get to the neon coloured green, yellow and pink dye that she has used.

I’ve probably finished with this particular image but I have another one that I’m thinking of working on. It's my granddaughter also reading on a mobile phone. Serendipitously she was wearing bright green and pink.

I’ve also moved the scarecrows on a bit.

Charcoal sketches from memory and imagination. I think the next step for this is some mixed media work

 

Slow Progress

I’ve made progress on two and a half fronts over the past few weeks. 

The half involves trying to do more drawing. My attendance at life drawing has been rather sporadic recently so I’ve decided that I need to get out and about with my sketchbook. What better opportunity than the Art Society summer sketching programme. 

Well, I sorted out and packed my kit, I got to the venues on time, and each time the heavens opened.  Fortunately the locations have been very carefully chosen (with proximity to cafe and toilet) so we’ve eaten cake, drunk coffee and nattered. I’ve been getting out and about, only the drawing is lacking!

In the studio (my work room has been upgraded) progress has been better.

I started playing with imagery in charcoal

Which I decided to translate into multi colour monoprints at Hot Bed

 I think I’m going to follow this way of working for this project. Its flexible and I can concentrate on exploring the imagery rather having to allow time to build or etch plates. I don’t think there will be a lot of interest in buying teetotal images (think they might be even less commercially viable than my French mausoleums) so the lack of multiple editioned prints won’t be a problem.

Recycle/reuse has changed completely. As  I was playing with painted music manuscript (I was thinking “music of the spheres” to go into my pierced metal ball) the phrase “weaver of words” came to mind. 

It stuck  and I’ve gone from this

through this

and  this

and this

And at the moment I think I have the components for the cover

And an idea of roughly what the content will be.

I now need to work out if I need to stiffen the old book pages (whilst still keeping the recycled ethos) for the pop ups and I’m contemplating trying to colour the insides of the hexagon to make the images read clearer. But hopefully this will be finished for the next NWBA meeting.

Etching experiments

I am working at the moment on a book that I'm hoping to print using gum arabic transfer. I’ve written the words and worked out a provisional layout. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been working on the images.

These are some of the earlier thoughts.

 I took photos of them to use to work out the layout and for some reason the black and white drawings seemed to have developed a slight colour cast. I exaggerated this in photoshop and like it so much that I’m going to try and replicate it for the final images.

I’m struggling a bit at the moment though because the words need a landscape format but the images for the individual pages want to be portrait.

I’d spent so much time working in charcoal that I hadn’t anything worked out to take to the press this week so I decided to crop a section of one of the charcoal drawings and try to translate it into an etching. 

I used different tapes, lipstick, marker pen, oil pastel and Vaseline as resists. I’ve only just discovered Vaseline and it’s great for making brushstrokes. Because nothing needed to dry, unlike traditional grounds, and because I only put the plate in the copper sulphate for a minute at a time the image developed really quickly.

The two proof states aren’t good finished prints but I’ve enjoyed just playing and seeing what happens. It's ended up more painterly than my prints usually do. I think I’m going to do more with this in between other projects.

More Drawing

Still feeling my way through this.

Part of me is responding to the fairy story connotations of the titile and wants to produce a series of images/prints (I tend to think in charcoal.). This is the me that collects childrens books

(though I usually prefer Shaun Tan and Dave KcKean to the more traditional approach.)

The other part of me thinks I should be responding more to themes contained within the original fairy story, Ideas such as imprisonment, isolation, unsucessful protection from loss of innocence. Probably using a more structural, less literal approach using motifs associated with the story.

I'm going to give myself time to play before making decisions. One thing does seem to be evolving though - a response to the tower. So far everyting seems to be tall and thin.