Brambles

 Studies from the bramble hedge at the allotment. Drypoint and monoprint. Tony says I've spent the day reinventing wallpaper!

More Monoprints

I would say I don’t know where the time goes but on reflection panto scenery and publicity stuff, helping to set up the Art Society exhibition and life in general have meant that creating and blogging have slowed down over the past few weeks. But I have managed a bit more monoprinting.

With drypoint (This is the gatehouse at Lyham Hall)

And with gum arabic.

If I can get enough good ones printed in time I’m hoping to make an edition of these for the Manchester Book Fair. At the moment I’m managing about one in three.

New Print

Art time over the past few days has been mainly spent finishing, framing and organising for exhibitions.

But I did manage to get one of the monoprint ideas a bit further on

These are a drypoint and the ghost print. I forgot to scan the stronger coloured first print before I  framed it.

Making progress

I’ve made progress, in small steps, on a few different things over the past two weeks.

I’ve finished two monoprints for the Art Society project “every shape, every colour, every shadow, every line (and every colour)” this week

 The first was an experiment using shellacked mount board as a drypoint plate to get detail. 

 The second used masking tape and magic tape on binder plastic.I want to edit and print off some of the photos of the pier that I took at Christmas and then I think this project is finished.

At the NWBA meeting this week we tried out the diagonal pocket fold from Hedi Kyle’s book “The art of the fold”.  I do like using left over gelli plate prints for experiments.

I’ve also made a start on a structure for the “reflections” book due at the next meeting.

But I think I’ll be running late with this one.  I volunteered to lead the March workshop, exploring the blizzard book, so I need to spend some time working out sizes and making some models.

The Asemic Writing book is moving very slowly. I think I’ve got the basis of a plate design and I think, because of the size, it will need to be a collagraph, but I’m not sure what materials and textures to use. I’ll need to do some letter samples.

 And finally yesterday I finished the letterpress for the text and title page for "these are the fish...." Now all I need is for the ink to dry and I can begin assembling it

Print Experiments

Spending so much time at my parents means producing work has slowed down quite a bit so I’ve given myself an extension for February’s Bakers dozen book. I hope to finish it by next week.

But over the past few days I have managed to do some experiments prints with trace monoprint, exploring possibilities for the map beasts book....

and also with text, considering drypoint and monoprint...

and collagraph.

For some reason the mountboard wouldn’t peel smoothly so it didn’t make a good enough plate for an edition but it’s OK for experimenting on.  I was undecided whether to glue the plastic with the text on before or after I shellacked the plate because I was worried about the ink collecting under the plastic and blotching as it went through the press. In the end I sealed and inked the collagraph plate and the text piece separately and just laid the text on the surface of the collagraph before pressing. The ink on the collagraph seemed to be tacky enough to hold it in place.

Experimenting with colour

I tend to think in tone rather than colour so while my current collagraph plate is under construction I thought I’d experiment with drypoint and monoprint, trying to get away from ‘realistic’ colour.

Not the most successful prints but I’m hoping what I’ve learned from the process will help me combine monoprint with the collagraph later on

Honesty

I've been exploring the Honesty seed heads, shape, colour, how they attach to the stem and the way the outer layers peel away from the inner membrane to release the seeds.

I've experimented with making paper,

and with embossing.

And with printing using drypoint,

and etching.