Rain, rain, go away

Every year in July I decide it’s a good idea to sign up for the 20:20 print exchange at Hot Bed Press. Every year half way through September I start to panic that I’ve no ideas, or at least no ideas that are feasible in an edition of 25.

This year was no exception. But then looking through my sketch books (or more accurately piles of loose sheets in boxes) I came across my scarecrow drawings. Subject matter found.

I decided to etch because my collagraph plates start to disintegrate with larger editions (and 25 for me is a larger edition)

It took a couple of goes to get the bite right (the first plate seemed to have developed a sort of grain right the way across the figure) but I’m quite pleased with how she turned out.

Little and often

Given the new normal I’m going to try and post more regularly. I’m not keeping a diary but I have taken on a lot of projects (I work best with deadlines) which hopefully will mean I make or plan something most days.

So far I’ve got three book things on the go, a NWBA collaborative project on Magellans voyage, ‘ABC’ a different NWBA project with the deadline of about 2 months and next month’s instagram challenge which is ‘machine’.

 I’ve also got work to make for two other projects that were planned for exhibitions with the Art Society on the theme of ‘Rural’ and ‘Making your Mark – a response to six women artists’ (hopefully these will go ahead sometime in the future) .

And an email arrived yesterday from the organiser of our yearly project run in conjunction with Lancashire archives who says that we are going to try and run that using virtual resources (it’s not as good as using the real thing but a lot better than nothing).

So since I finished the hexagon book for the ‘are you book enough’ challenge I’ve been thinking about ideas for ‘ABC’ and ‘Machine’ and finishing the latest set of scarecrow paintings.

Knowledge is never wasted

Deciding that I need distracting and some deadlines in this new and strange way of living  I decided to have a go at the “are you book enough?” challenge, a book a month each on a different theme.

March’s theme is Hexagon.

40 plus years ago when I was taking A levels we all had to do General Studies. It was a new qualification and the teaching at the time was a bit ad hoc. Whilst most of my friends were taught topics such as politics and local government I manage two terms of patchwork (no idea where that was supposed to fit in the syllabus) led by the RE teacher. 40 plus years on it has come in handy.

Ideally I’d have liked to use a selection of more worn looking and feminine fabrics but because I’m even avoiding shopping at the charity shop I had to use the contents of the rag bag. The only stuff in there in a suitable weight fabric were two old pairs of pyjama trousers.

The difficulty now is uploading it to the instagram group.

 I’ve also managed a bit more scarecrow painting, not finished yet. Brighter colours this time using process colours and white.

Painting

I haven’t painted very much at all in the past few years (other than stage scenery) but I wanted to explore the scarecrow imagery a bit more before I started to work on monoprints.

I kept it simple. Some new paper I wanted to try out (Seawhites are making a cartridge paper out of recycled coffee cups), a base colour of process blue and white (that was leftover from a nude silhouette of Granny Ogg!) and a restricted palette of burnt umber, Prussian blue, cadmium yellow deep, crimson and titanium white acrylics.

I warmed up with a few simple imaginary landscape bits.

Then onto the scarecrows.

The dark red and green background were initially underpainting but when I’d put some white on the shirts I decided I liked the contrast and kept it.

The next step is a bit more painting and some experiments with monoprint.