Gelli plate letters

I was given a Gelli plate for Christmas so I’ve decided to use it for my first ALAW 2014 alphabet.

 I’ve never used one before so I want to keep it simple. 

 I’m exploring how stylised a letter can be or how little of it do you need to see in order for it to be readable as that letter. I’m going to use these positive/negative shapes to create 26 abstract prints.

I’ve not decided yet how I’ll put them together.

 

 These last two are close to what I want - shame the Y is the wrong way round.

Exploring Personal Histories

As part of the experiments I’ve been doing for ‘Personal Histories’ I’ve been scanning family photographs.

My husband has an old family album. It’s quite small with leather covered wood boards (very wormy) and it’s not in the best of conditions. It’s probably more accurate to say that he has bits of a family album. Restoring it is beyond my skills but I decided to scan the pages and boards and create a digitally printed facsimile.

Of course I got carried away; having scanned the pages it was easy to create extra blank frames to add more photos that weren't originally in the album.

I printed it on cheap printer paper in black and white just to see what I could do with it. The images are concertinaed and the end pages glued to the cover. This was just a quick way to explore the idea rather than sewing but I quite like the way it opens out. 

 If I am more restrained with the number of pages I think this structure could be adapted to work with a chain of dancing dolls.

Updating the blog

I've spent most of today trying to remember how to redo the settings for blogger and learning how to add pages so that I can show finished work here. Think I've finally got it.

I'm now in the process of editing and uploading archived photos.

Wednesday off

I wasn't in work this Wednesday. In the afternoon my four month old grandson came to play. How does someone so small completely occupy several adults?

But in the morning there was time to play - more mixed media.

Time to play

In the final few days of the holidays I’ve had time to play. I’m exploring the ancestors in mixed media hoping it will generate ideas for print as well as a step further towards ‘Personal Histories’.

Having run out of gel medium I've rediscovered selotape transfer.

PS  A technical query
Followers seem to have disappeared off the blog. They are still on the blogger pages but I can't get then to appear with posts. Can anyone help?

Pondering Personal Histories

I’ve been thinking about how to start my Personal Histories book.

When I went on a solar print workshop a few months ago I used old family photos as the basis for some designs and I want to continue using these as source material for this project

We all have a stash somewhere of old photos, some of relatives and friends we recognise and others who we don’t have a clue about who they are. As time passes they just become faces. We may know their name, if it is written on the back, but we don’t know anything about them.

I also think most families will have a scattering of heroes and villains in amongst the majority of the ordinary people who make up their ancestry. Their stories may have been completely fictionalized in the telling and retelling, or just forgotten over the years.

I want to combine these two ideas, the hidden stories and the almost anonymous figures.

I’ve decided base my images on the children’s rhyme “Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief”. We’ve probably all got some of these amongst our antecedents.

I’m not sure yet what structure to use. You’d think I’d learn from experience and sort this out first. It would avoid a lot of problems further down the road! However, at the moment I’m contemplating a series of unbound images jumbled together in a box/container the same way that the original source photos are kept, although I also quite like the idea of a frieze of dancing dolls.

This is Agnes Hall. I decided to divorce her from Thomas.

Peace Alphbet Structure

I’ve finished the peace alphabet for ALAW early. I wanted to make sure it came in on time.

The idea underlying my alphabet is that we are surrounded by constant noise and busyness in our everyday lives (represented by the different weights and directions of text that make up the sections of the book structure). At intervals through the book are the letters, calm, translucent and delicate, moments of peace in a hectic world.

This has definitely been a reflection of my world recently.  The only sustained art work I’ve managed to do over the past few months has been this project. Hopefully with the New Year things will calm down a bit.

Repurposed letters

I started to clear out my workspace and got sidetracked by the cut out letter forms left over from the book I made for the first ALAW alphabet.

I thought they'd make a good collagraph plate but I was experimenting with water soluble ink and I think that the paper was too wet.

 Its a shame that I remembered to reverse the letters because I think I prefer the block

Not much happening......

I haven’t disappeared its just that work has been manic (and is set to continue so for the next few weeks). Added to this I’ve just become a grandma.

The only picture making I’ve managed to do this month has been for teaching purpose, though I may follow these digital images through into print after using them in class.

 

Also I’ve managed to keep up with ALAW, starting to stitch a book structure for mounting the letters in.

Folding prints

College holidays have finished. This means that play time has been restricted over the past couple of weeks. Having managed to ignore it up to now prep for next term has had to take priority.

However I have explored monoprinting plants with a rainbow roll and folding to make a simple structure

I’ve also committed to making something for Robyn’s Personal Histories Exhibition. I think I’ll play more with the ancestors photos as a starting point.