As it's the first of June, and the start of summer (well, late Spring I suppose - 21 days to go until summer proper!) and it's raining outside - sigh - I thought it was a good time to blog. As you may have noticed, there seems to be a bit of a bird theme with a lot of my pictures. I find watching birds very relaxing - whether it's just watching the Goldfinch and the Swifts (hooray, a summer bird!) skittering round above the garden, checking the robins are still popping in and out of the bushes (we are slowly getting more different visitors in the garden) or just seeing what we spot when out and about on our walks. We also enjoy visiting Brandon Marsh to see what's about there too; hence Bittern spotting! Not only is it relaxing - much needed with both of our jobs - but it's helping give me plenty of inspiration for pictures too, and I like having a growing knowledge of what's around me. I am rubbish with birdsong though - apart from a Green Woodpecker's yaffle ;-) I wanted to share some of my photographs I have been collecting together over the last few months and a few drawings that I've done too. The chap above - Dunnock - was drawn from a photograph I took on a visit to Packwood House, one of our local National Trust properties earlier in the year. It's actually quite a big drawing, I must remember to try and put something onto my pictures to show the scale of them! I have been checking out the use of images and copyright for copying/referencing images and have come to the conclusion it is far safer to take my own (or use Dave's pictures with his permission of course!), so I have been trying to sneak the camera away from Dave to take photos when we are out and about. We have a Canon 700D and two lenses. One is a zoomier lens than the other. You can tell I'm very technically minded about such things! I might add more detail about the camera later, but I'll need to go and read things first!! I have been practising my manual focusing rather than relying on the auto settings, but still need lessons to learn more about ISO settings and shutter speeds! I am getting there slowly - practise and playing will keep helping! I haven't filtered or altered my pictures in any way colourwise; they are as taken, apart from the odd bit of cropping to take out a stray branch or just to improve the framing. I'm not a photoshop fan! We've just got back from a lovely few days away in Chapel Stile in the Lakes District (the sun was out and it was a warm and balmy three days!) where I was hoping to get a bit more photography done. However the birds must be very well fed because we had very few visitors to the cottage garden, whereas at Easter it was packed out with birds on the feeder. I took the first two pictures below of the Blue Tit and the Chaffinch there at Easter. The Nuthatch (sitting on the bacon!) was taken at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in February. There were lots of water birds there too and a fabulous heronry in the trees, I think we stopped counting at around 30 nests! The drawing of Heron underneath is bigger than it looks - it's on A2 size paper, as is the Dunnock's head above. More about drawing later! Pheasant is a shot from this weekend - he had landed in the garden next door to us and was pinching bird seed off the floor under their feeders. Mr Robin was also taken on the visit to Packwood House - which is also where I took the gourd/pumpkin photograph in one of my earlier blogs. I'm hoping the images should grow to full size when you click on them in the gallery below! What kick-started me creating more art again was taking part in 'Inktober' last year. The idea is to draw, in ink, every day in October, and to share your images online, mine were shared via twitter and my instagram account, with the hashtag #inktober! Day one started with drawing a Wheatear that we had spotted while at Draycote Water for a walk, and day two was a Lapwing, spotted at Brandon Marsh. It wasn't all birds from there on in! Some of the other drawings are on my gallery page on this website. I found it tricky to start with as I stuck to drawing just in ink, using a yellow pen for my initial sketches and then building in colour on top. I can also see the progress in my drawing as the month went along. I got a lot more confident in myself and what I was doing which obviously came from drawing every day! Kingfisher was a culmination of a few days towards the end of inktober (and I did start with a pencil sketch for this one) - one of our friends Viv complained that she hadn't seen the Kingfisher on our local pond which we promised she would see, so I drew one instead! Almost the same ;-) hmmmm.... Duck and Owl were post inktober drawings, both in my A5 sketchbook, and from there the bird theme has just continued! I've been mainly drawing using pencil crayons, or Faber Castel Pitt Artist's brush pens which have a really vibrant colour to them - Kingfisher was just a pen drawing - or a combination of both, which I think is what I prefer to do. Next step is to practise drawing feathers though as I can find them quite tricky! My next printing project has started with drawing out my idea first - again on an A2 size, far bigger than my linocut will be! I've not finished all of the colouring, but think I will start the print and then return to the drawing later. It has wings, but it's not a bird! I am hoping to get it started over the next few days, I've done enough thinking about it! Hopefully I'll be able to get the camera off Dave to get some more photos done too. I should get him to do a guest blog with some of his pictures - he has taken some cracking photographs and has a much better understanding of the technical twiddly things on the camera ;-)
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Well, it's been a while, but I have still be beavering away doing bits and bobs. The start of March was quiet, a couple of mini-projects were done, but nothing major. Then I started #projectsiskin, which then turned into more of an 'April thing'. I have treated myself to a new roller :-) and it makes a HUGE difference :-) it is much wider, and applies the ink much better too. You get what you pay for I suppose ;-) #projectsiskin has been sporadic, as always being fitted around work and holibobs away. There was a bit of time between completing the first cut and making the yellow print, and then a hive of activity over the last week with a couple of late nights to get the print finished for a certain deadline - more details in a bit - which included two long sessions after work on Monday and Tuesday. Luckily Dave was out so he didn't have to put up with me turning the downstairs into my printing zone! The dogs coped quite well too - they got lovely long walkies before I started to make sure they were settled. I 'pulled' (trying to use technical terms ;-)) twelve yellow prints, getting more successful as I went along as I got used to the tackiness of the ink - I didn't need as much ink as I thought to get the best results, and as I mentioned before, so much easier with a wider roller. I'd set up my register plate too - having to use quite a big sheet of card to do so as I was printing onto A3. I also worked in all different directions around the register (the piece of paper you use to make sure that you get your prints lined up each time) making marks all over the place. Layer two was great too see as it was added on top of the yellow. I kept a couple of grey/yellow prints too, partly because I liked them and partly because the third layer was tricker than I thought! The third layer was challenging for two reasons: a) getting the register (as in getting it lined up perfectly) right and b) the fluidity of the black ink. I stood with my cutters cutting more away from the print block after each print - I'd been too cautious removing areas to start off with - as the ink was 'bleeding' slightly. I fixed it by cutting away lots of bits where it was 'blobbing' and then also by mixing a really dark grey for the final layer instead. This seemed to work as the white I mixed in was a thicker consistency. From a yellow/grey run of 11 on my second pull, I finished with two three layer prints in the end! I stopped because I was getting tired and Dave had come home, and I was trying not to get frustrated. So the final 'Siskin' currently is a print run of two! The prints were all left out for mum and dad to find on Wednesday morning as they were going to help me get it mounted ready for the closing date for submissions for the Coventry Open Exhibition on the Saturday. I still haven't learnt to leave time before a deadline! (At University I ran a much closer gauntlet, often pulling all nighters the day before an essay was due in! Very bad example I know!) Mum and Dad chose two prints and took them to Friswell's in Earlson, sorting out, not only a mount but a frame too. They made a great choice and the frame looks fabulous. I nervously took my 'Siskin' and 'Bittern' prints in to the Herbert Art Gallery on Saturday with Dad. They reckon they receive around 300-400 entries, and from that choose 60-70 paintings/prints/photographs/sculptures etc to display, so we will see.... but you have to try don't you? We then very much enjoyed visiting the Grayson Perry exhibition 'The Vanity of Small Differences'. It is well worth a visit. Lovely to spend the time chucking with Dad and trying to find Grayson's signature mark in each of the weavings - an alternative version of finding the duck in Richard Scarry books I remarked at the time! I've also set up a new facebook page for my lino cut, which you should be able to find the link to on the 'contacts' page, if you fancy. alix xx Now I really couldn't pass up the chance of having a leap day blog! #projectpumpkin came about following a trip to Packwood House (National Trust) in January. The pumpkins on show in the kitchen garden were just beautiful. When I was deciding what to do next, and I knew I wanted to try a reduction lino print - I haven't done one since the course at the end of last year, and the start of this journey - at home, the gnarly gourds/pumpkins had been floating about in my brain for a while.... so decision made! A reduction print - for those who want to know, go on, you know you do ;-) - works in layers. With each print you cut more away from the lino 'block' before you print again. It's also known as a 'suicide print'. Once you've printed and then started cutting into the block again, there is no going back! You can't make any more of them as you've destroyed your original print block, and so it limits itself as a print by the number of initial prints you make from the first cut and then as you go through the process by if you get the register - lining up the prints on top of each other perfectly - correct as to how many finished prints you end up with! This print was just two 'cuts'. The first print to give a background colour for the pumpkin, and the second to add detail. You can see the different layers/prints in the slideshow thingy at the bottom. I started with five initial grey prints, and due to register issues have three finished prints! It's another skill to keep practising! I really like the finished print, I think it might be about time to invest in some more colours of printing ink! I've also decided to have a play about with the page layout of the blog, hopefully this will be easier to read than a strip down the side. Please feel free to add comments or feedback under any blog or images, or message me, to let me know what you think of them. I know folks out there are reading this and it would be nice to know if I am heading in the right direction with what I'm doing... or if you have any ideas about future prints! In other news; we have now seen the Bittern twice at Brandon Marsh after stalking out the reed bed for a bit. It looked just like my print..... ;-) alix x
So, I've decided to take the plunge into this website thing, as I wanted somewhere to record what I have been up to since picking up my pencils/pens/general arty stuff again and starting to create a few more things on a more regular basis.
Most recently I have learnt to lino cut, and I have thoroughly enjoyed using my new skill. I hope to post another entry in a minute showing images from the reduction lino print course I attended with my mum last week :-) I am currently still trying to work out how on earth I build this website! It seems to be going OK so far..... alix :-) |
Here we go...The ramblings of a linocut printmaker.... and other artistic adventures! Archives
December 2020
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