Time management?

What do you do when you are already wondering about the time it will take to fulfil the commitments you have made to producing work?

Do you sign up for another project?

The sensible answer is probably not.

I don’t think I do sensible. I’ve just signed up for a book swop on Artist Books 3.0. I think it is turning into a simplified version of the ruined village book I started last year (which I fully intend to finish when I stop signing up for other things)

These are preliminary drawings. I think I’d like to etch from them but that will have to happen later on a reduced scale.  I don’t have the skills to do an etching big enough for the book size

Testing to destruction

I’ve learned a lot over the past few days about what I can and can’t do with aluminium and copper sulphate. I’ve also found that spit bite with these materials is a lot easier than I had imagined.

I’m fairly please with one of the prints. The starting point for this one had an image already partly worked on it and you can still see more of that in the background than I would like.

The other two plates I managed to ruin completely but I’ve enjoyed the journey.

Continuing

It’s been a frustrating day. I’ve tried a variety of techniques, using traditional and more experimental media to add texture and to stop out the plate.I’m trying not to be too controlled with these prints and more open to accidental markmaking. Some techniques have been more successful than others.

Using a wash of graphic chemical block printing ink mixed with water over the whole plate, and then dropping in meths (it reacts with the water and pushes the pigment into interesting shapes) has worked in the past, but not today. It also takes ages to dry

So I used textured wallpaper to print white acrylic as a resit

I really like the way I can use oil pastel to get a drawn line of resist, using different colours to help me see the different applications between biting

The state of the plates so far:-

And the test prints from them:-

They need working into but I’ll see what happens next

I’ve been reading Jim Dine: A Printmaker's Document. He uses power tools a lot, I think these may be a bit small to attack with a chain saw but I’ve got a Dremel lurking in the cupboard!

Printing Again

Three days into the holidays and I have hidden myself in my workroom. In theory I’m working on a set of three prints (I’ll see how far I get).

 I want them to be fairly abstract but I work best with some reference to reality so I’m working from some photos of shells and fossils that I took a while ago.

To make life difficult I decided that I wanted to work in a square format. I found three 12 cm square plates in the drawer already backed and edges filed. It wasn’t till I turned them over I remembered that they were all marked, left over from another project.  Two aren’t too bad, one has a spot on the corner where I think I must have spilt copper sulphate, and one is pitted in places where I did a very unsuccessful soft ground drawing. The one I decided to use first has the start of a composition with buildings on it. I’m hoping the erasure marks and the left over texture will make the print more interesting.

I started with a soft ground etch to put in the rough composition lines.

Then I decided to blitz the background. I used lipstick as a resist.

I could still see quite a lot of the previous textures so I used a roulette wheel on the background and scraped and burnished bits of the foreground. I did a test print using burnt umber to see how it was going so far.

I’m hoping it might work

Abstracted letters

I just realised that it’s over a month since I last posted anything – when work gets busy creativity seems to fly out of the window. That’s why I like participating in projects like ALAW, a small manageable task each week at least makes me feel like I’ve not completely given up

I’m using a gelliplate trying to use as little of the letter as possible to make mini monoprints that work as abstractions and can still be read as a letter.

There is no overriding colour scheme for this alphabet. By mixing up the letters rather than printing them in alphabetical order I’m hoping that the colours will end up varied from one to the next when they are put in sequence.

Abstract Collagraphs

I’ll be starting a new print unit in college in a few weeks so I’ve been going back to basics and refreshing my portfolio of teaching samples

I like this Prussian blue. It reminds me of cyanotype prints

Transparency

I came across the acetates I’d made for solar printing the other day. I liked the way you could see through the clear parts to the image behind.

Starting by making some smaller inkjet prints on acetate I decided that the ink side of the print needs protecting. It is susceptible to scratching but also feels slightly sticky because of the layer of ‘stuff’ on the film that the ink sticks too.

As I started to arrange and play with the order it occurred to me that if they were thicker they might resemble the glass plate negatives that some of the original photos will have been produced on. I cannot print directly onto perspex so I have been experimenting with layering ink jet prints (on acetate) with other materials to give a more substantial feel.

Inkjet transfer print wasn’t successful onto a nonporous surface and using gel medium to stick the print to a substrate leaves drying marks, the gel is difficult to spread absolutely evenly and because it is encased between two plastic layers it doesn’t dry well. Stuck to a flexible material it also peels away, not good for a book structure

Laminating the acetate seems to be the most successful method so far. They aren’t as thick as I’d like but they will stand independently.  I think I can do something with these.

Art Swops

I took part in 'Pay It Forward' a couple of years ago and enjoyed it. I’d been playing with weaving and papercutting so I sent this book.

I came across an invitation to join in this year on Jack Oudyn’s blog

The way it works is this

 

I promise to make a small work of art for the first four people who comment on this post and say "YES, I want in". (A 'like' alone is not enough of a commitment, nor is a comment about thinking Pay It Forward is a great idea.)  I also make a piece for Jack.
 

These four in turn then post a similar entry to this (referencing Pay It Forward and my blog) and must make something for the first four people who comment and something for me

  

It’s bit like pyramid selling in reverse, a sort of pyramid giving. 

The rules are simple

•  It has to be your work, this can be anything art-based
• The recipients must receive it before 2014 ends,

Does anyone out there want to play?

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.