Narrative and thematic similarities between Gauguin and Stanley Spencer

After visiting the Gauguin exhibition it occured to me how important narrative was in Gaugin's work and it made me think of Stanley Spencer's resurrection paintings. Both artists also have a spiritual side, Gauguin disavowed the Catholic church yet explored spiritual themes and even Christian ones as in Christ in the Garden of Olives(pictured), whilst Spencer had a deeply religious Christian upbringing and often referred to biblical passages in his work as in Zacharias and Elizabeth (pictured).

Gauguin Exhibition

On 14th November I went to the Gauguin exhibition at Tate Modern which I didn't expect to have any bearing on printmaking although he did do some primitive woodcuts. I was surprised that I found myself thinking "that would make a nice three coulour lino print".

The exhibition was laid out in rooms, each one relating to a different area his life or work, which I found very helpful in forming a picture of 'Gauguin'. The rooms were as follows:

Identity and Self Mythology - Guaguin used his self portraits to create the identity he wanted for himself. He was afterall, a bourgois banker and family man who turned himself into a bohemian martyr. I can't help wondering when he portrays himself wearing a fez who he is trying to convince that he's a bohemian intellectual. At the time he was a stockbroker painting for a hobby, I think he was trying to convince himself. I can relate to this as I have been a bank manager myself whilst painting as a hobby but I always thought of myself as more of an artist than a bank manager.


Making the familiar Strange - Some of Gauguin's still lifes are amongst his most decorative and surreal, for example the painting of one of his children sleeping with a bird on the wallpaper in the background. The bird looks so real that it could be the subject of the child's dream. Many of the domestic scenes depict normal family life which must have been fraught because he wanted to be a painter but had a family to support. This was a source of tension between him and his wife.

Life and Times 1848 to 1891 - This room included a selection of books and letters and revealed something of his background which was very much rooted in Paris. Even when he was on Tahiti he kept in touch with what was going on in Paris. He is said to have been disappointed that the Tahitian's were so westernised but it didn't stop him using their postal system to stay in touch with developments back home and of course to keep in touch with his dealer.

Guaguin's Drawings - Some of these drawings are 'technically' very good, the sort of drawings most people would think of as displaying exceptional skill. The more interesting ones are those where Gauguin is experimenting and trying to evolve a new raw essentialised form of drawing free from analytical detail.

Landscape and Rural Narrative - Gauguin went to Brittany many times and painted the locals with affection. He found the area wild and primitive. The people were the most important thing to Gauguin in capturing the essence of a landscape and portraying the way they interact with their landscape seems to be part of that. Folk traditions and locally produced items also seem to have inspired him greatly. His first trips to completely alien landscapes were to Panama and then to Martinique in 1887. Martinique in particular seems to have changed his painting from the sombre early paintings of Brittany to a vibrant palette. The paintings also have a flattened perspective which adds to their decorativeness but all this was completely counter to the culture of European art at the time. It made me think of the work by Matisse sometime later with it's leaning towards decoration rather than traditional perspective. Although Gauguin had romantecised preconceptions that led him to these foreign countries which often seem to have received a rude awakening when he got there (he left Panama with dysentry and malaria and found the Tahitians too westernised) he tries to convey in a subjective way how he feels about landscapes, cultures and peoples that are so very different to Paris. You get the message that his senses are screaming "wow!" at the lush vegetation and tropical sunlight but the finished paintings are also a work of his intellect, there is an intellectual process that say's "how can I show these dull Parisians what a tropical island paradise is like?" In the end, Gauguin for me, remains a romantic.

Rooms 6 and 7 - Sacred Themes and The Eternal Feminine - For someone who wasn't keen on the Christian Church Gauguin seems to have spent quite a lot of time exploring pre Christian and pagan themes. There were some primitive wood cuts which worked well for the subjects they portrayed ie. pagan deities. All his carvings and woodcuts could easily have been made by the local inhabitants. I liked the way he worked from a 3D wood carving made by himself back into a 2D painting of the same object. He doesn't draw exclusively on the locals mythology but mixes up Christian and Buddhist beliefs with Tahitian settings to almost create his own mythology.

Room 8 - Life and Times 1889 to 1903 - Not only did Gauguin become what he set out to become ie. a bohemian intellectual artist and traveller, but he went further and actually immersed himself in the culture and folklore of his landscapes in an almost scientific way. He wasn't just flirting with exoticism. However more superficially, he managed to construct a myth about himself that grew and continued growing after his death.

Rooms 9 and 10 - Gauguin's Titles, Teller of Tales - It's quite obvious that words and narrative were an integral part of his work and he even produced wood cut books. Just as he told a tale about himself in the role he wanted to play and then became that role so he wanted his paintings to tell tales or at least imply a narrative often by using enigmatic titles such as, "Are you jealous?", is this addressed to the viewer or is it a question posed by the people in the painting? Is it a drama being played out by the characters or is he saying to the viewer, "I bet you wish you could give up your bourgeois Parisian lifestyle for this tropical heaven". When I looked at some of his elongated landscapes which almost read like story books I am reminded of Stanley Spencer's idealised narrative painting 'The Resurrection, Cookham'

Room 11 - Earthly Paradise - The myth of Gauguin's final years is a carefree existence in a tropical Eden, a myth which he created himself, but the reality was ill health due to an ankle injury and the onset of syphilis. This and his uncertain financial situation don't seem to have dislodged the myth from his imagination one bit, if anything the nearer he gets to death the more fervently he imagines paradise, as if embracing it.

Final thoughtt - Stanley Spencer's earlier devotional paintings such as Zacharias and Elizabeth and Gauguin's 1889 painting 'Christ in the Garden of Olives' are stylistically and thematically very similar. Their portrayals of an earthly paradise and their use of narrative are very much akin to one another.

This exhibition made me realise how complexed a character Gauguin was but also how intriguing, his many facetted work still holding our interest today.

Reflections on Assigment Two

This is the final 3 block print I produced. I struggled with the registration but this was the best I could do. I like the colours and the basic design but it's not up to the quality to which I aspire.

I found this assigment technically difficult and needed to develop new skills and invent techniques. I think this is part of the problem with doing a distance learning course, you can't watch a tutor and copy them you have to work out everything for yourself. To be honest I still haven't mastered consistently transferring a flat layer of ink from the block onto the paper. I feel like buying a simple press as I'm sure it would make it easier but I must be able to get acceptable results without, I'll just have to keep working at it.

I have included my tutors report of the work I sent on a separate page. It contains some useful comments and is very encouraging.

I knew very early on what the subject matter for the last assigment would be but for the next one I have no ideas. I think I need to go back to my sketch book and just draw and collate for a while. The weather is getting perishingly cold which will make printing in my shed a labour of love and Christmas is coming which is bound to disrupt printing so I'm planning to get the next assignment in before the middle of February.

Three Colour Lino prints

I've done some prints of the Rotunda at Bromptton Road Cemetary which I'm proud of. See the separate pages with my detailed notes. I just want to do some final prints and some experimental colour notes and I will send this work off to my tutor. I think I'm pretty much on track if I keep this progress up.

Assigment 2 (update)

I took a week off work to progress this assigment as I had slipped behind due to other committments.

I started off by designing the first single colour lino cut. I chose to base it on a drawing I had done of some gravestones in Brompton Cemetary which I liked because the light was good and created strong shadows which I felt I would be able to use to good effect. Also there was a recession in the image due to one gravestone being very close looking out across others into the middle distance. The sky in between the graves also created an interesting negative space.

I have created a separate page with my detailed learning points as I made the prints.

I then went on to develop ideas for another image based around a grave I found in a church yard in Essex with a cage over it. The body was that of a 15 year old girl called Sarah Wrench who died in the 1800's. The cage was apparently to stop grave robbers stealing her body and that of her unborn child and I found it very evocative.

It reminded me of the shelter drawings of Henry Moore so I did some exploratry drawings and colour notes. I noticed the way Moore used a cage like structure to define the bodies of the sleepers and I drecided to make a cage like mask of a sleepers head.

Once I had created this 3D object I photographed it in dramatic lighting and then used the printed A4 versions as the design for my block.

Tutor Report Forms

I have created a separate page with all my Tutor Report Forms on it. I have also included my comments and learning points.

Activities over summer

I sent my work off to my Tutor and eagerly await feedback! During my holiday and most of August/September I have been collecting photographs and sketches for the next project on relief printing using lino cuts.

I have collected images from churches and graveyards wherever I have been. There always seems to be a church or graveyard around and they are all different so this is a fruitful source of inspiration. The theme will be 'The Architecture of Death'!!

On Saturday I did my first test cuts on A4 sheets of lino divided up into squares. I systematically used different gouges and recorded the effects. I then did another A4 sheet divided up into squares and experimented in creating different textures, again recorded systematically in my note book.

I inked both of these up and printed from them and then took another print with the residual ink. I then took the first block and printed from it in one colour and then overprinted the second block in another colour.

I was surprised at the variety of effects I could get with the different sizes and shapes of gouge, some were smooth and curved and some were ragged edged. The difference inspired me to experiment with the next block of textures mentioned above.

If there's one thing I've learned so far it's that printing has a special dimension, which is the unpredictable effects you get from experimenting with techniques and processes.

Whilst a commercial printer might want to eradicate this unpredictability to achieve a perfect replication, as an artist I want to embrace the unpredicatability and use it to my advantage.

I am particularly drawn to textural effects using colour combinations. However I know that I need to complete the stages of the course so I need to produce some clear printed images first but it will enhance my portfolio if I then do additional work exploring the textural opportunities that present themselves.

Summer Exhibition RA - 30th July 2010

I always go to the Summer Exhibition, it's a bit like a circus and fire auction rolled into one. I particularly wanted to go this year because I know there are a lot of prints, mainly in the Large Weston Room. This year there were prints throughout the exhibition which I don't remember before.

I find it annoying that the prints with the most red dots on are either small, comic images, obviously reasonably priced, or the attempts by RA's to cash in on their name by producing a series of prints. That's me off the potential RA list then!

There is no doubt that a successful print at the Summer Exhibition can make you a lot of money.

On the whole I liked what I saw although I can't see the point of purely representative etchings, what do they add to printing other than showing how good the printer is at etching?

My favourites were:

Quarry Edge - very colourful screenprint by Barbara Rae

Red Sky - as above

Bikini Print - silkscreen by Gary Hume of a stylised naked torso with a big brown nipple slightly off centre. I like the design of this and the interesting shapes. the combination of pink, grey and the big brown nipple was interesting too.

Three prints by Stephen Chambers (one of which I've shown here) The Professor, A Problem Day and Medlar Meddler.

Wollman Rink by Bill Jacklin (shown here) I like the design of the skaters and their shadows which is interesting yet cohesive.

Late Night Stories - Hand finished lino cut by Claas Gutsche of a block of flats at night with different coloured light in windows. This was atmospheric and clever but simple at the same time.

My favourite print was White Horse, Sutton Bank - a lino cut by Catherine Sutcliffe-Fuller. This was an interesting representation of a chalk horse with some red dots and brown but mainly black. It combined a number of elements of a landscape, like street lights and roads leading to the hill with the white horse itself but all jumbled up to make a decorative and interesting image.

Apart from prints I liked the large sketchy oils of William Bowyer, with their peculiarly acidic colours, interesting mark making and chilly Sunday afternoon in February atmosphere.

Module Four - finished on schedule

I feel like I'm making progress now, not just because I've completed this module by the end of July as I planned but because I'm beginning to understand monoprinting. I certainly have an idea about how to generate certain effects and how to work with the 'accidents' that happen.

I have my own ideas about making prints that have a luminous quality and are atmospheric and I'm beginning to develop a palette that allows me to do this. I want to use the textures that are peculiar to monoprinting in a creative way and I want to generate images that have their own perspective not necessarily from a fixed point, a bit like cubism or the Hockney photomontages.

I guess I'm talking about multiple images in one work, decorative not abstract but around an evocative theme.

Anyway I can spend the rest of this course finding out what I mean!

I've posted two of my recent prints which I am happy with as far as they go.

Made contact with my tutor which is a huge relief as I can't do this completely on my own. She sounds constructive, helpful and professional.

I am away on holdiday at the end of this week and will spend the time doing some watercolour sketches for fun and planning how I'm going to do the next Project which is relief printing.

Change of approach required

I have now completed the first of the four final prints to complete module One of the five modules together with sketches and drawings and notes but I am far from satisfied with the results.


I started off wanting to do a print of the inside of an old barn but the stencil I cut was too fiddly for this type of basic mono printing. It might work with block printing or screen printing but not mono printing.



What I ended up with was a representation of a tractor in part of a barn which is not quite as spiritually uplifting. Also whilst I did some good experimentation with layering of transparent colours over the top of others to get interesting colour effects the overall colour combination was quite naff! It was well printed for me with good regristration of interlocking shapes and a relatively flat application of colour but it fell short of what I aspired to.



The conclude, there was no subtlety. It strikes me that if you go for subtlety in monoprinting you need to look to the accidental brush marks and textural effects you get from second generation prints.



I realise I need to re think my approach to the remaining three images of this module. I had neatly planned what they were going to be about but now I think I need to create new ideas for images from the textural effects I am getting, in other words working more closely with the medium.

Southbank Printmakers Exhibition

I went to the Southbank Printmakers exhibition yesterday which was in the crypt of St Martins in the Fields off Trafalgar Square and liked the venue and the work. Many of the printmakers who exhibited also had work at the Bankside exhibition I went to recently.



It was a good exhibition with a high standard of work by professional printmakers. The group also run their own gallery on the Southbank near the National Theatre which I must go to at some point.



I think the most useful thing for me is to see how much progress I am making with my printing technique and to be honest I am a long way from being good enough, that said I am still experimenting whilst these printers have already worked out their preferred method of printing and then just improved it over the years.



I also know what sort of prints I like and as I refine my taste it will help me in the artistsic choices I make with my own work.



I recently picked up a copy of Printmaking Today Magazine from The London Graphic Centre which featured an article on the printmaking of Henry Moore who is one of my all time favourite artist/sculptors and I really must buy a book of his prints or go to the forthcoming exhibition of his work or both.



Finding out what the printmaking network is and plugging into it has been quite hard but I am getting a feel for what is going on.



I'm also getting more and more bits and bobs, particularly inks which I try out for various effects. I recently saw a printing demonstration done with black, cyanne, process yellow and process magenta which is the way commercial printers do colour and I've bought these colours with a view to doing the same. Using an extender I make very transparent colours and layer them over each other to get other colours. I really like the transparent effect which reminds me of watercolour.



I have also bought a large tube of Rowney medium which enables me to mix ordinary oil colours and use them as printing inks which is an approach to colour that I am more used to because I can just use my existing oil palette and the paints in my box which I know how to work.



I am on track to finish the first of the five modules by the end of July but the progress I am making is still agonisingly slow, I will have taken seven months. But there is no alternative if I am going to learn the lessons I need to learn to produce degree standard work, I am afterall teaching myself a completely new skill.

Royal Society of Printmakers exhibition at Bankside Gallery 22nd May

I went to this exhibition expecting to be impressed by the work of the best printmakers this country has to offer but came away rather underwhelmed. I will give a more detailed log of my favourite works later (yes there were some I liked!) but this entry is a more general reflection. The Bankside Gallery is ideal for this sort of specialised exhibition being a 'professional' space in an area of heavy footflow and big enough to exhibit small to medium size graphic works so the exhibition experience was always going to be satisfying.



There was a steady flow of the general public through the exhibition in the two hours I was there and the Society had provided a demonstration of etching by one of the members which attracted a good deal of attention. The fact that this was done at all is interesting because it shows how little the idea of Print has permeated the public consciousness and how useful and entertaining such eduction is.



For most people it's all Art and how it's made is of secondary interest which raises the question, "What was this exhibition about?", was it about ideas, or decoration, or was it about technical ability?



I felt the exhibition was too much about technical ability and how proficient the members were at their particular discipline rather than how Print can express ideas in a unique way that other mediums cannot.



On my own progress I have spent the time since my last entry developing a series of prints using stencils, both positive and negative, from an initial life drawing session using a pregnant model. These drawings morphed into a boxer! It was a good solid shape for making stencils and anyway the point of the exercise was to explore the possibilities of layering and offsetting stencils with colours and of introducing textures to the inked plate.



Some of the prints were successful and some were more experimental but still useful. I thought the textural effects achieved by back drawing were particularly useful.



On a separate note I wanted to make a printing press using angle iron and a car jack which I can use for small scale relief prints and having designed such a press I constructed it and experimented with blocks of lino about 4" square using plant leaves as stencils. This actually produced some very clear and well defined prints but I am still experimenting with registration and getting a completely consistent and flat spread of ink.



Using larger bits of lino didn't work because the pressure didn't extend to the outer edges giving an inconsistent layer of ink but I can build up larger images in a patchwork of smaller prints if I design my images cleverly.



I am really looking forward to the last part of this module which will involve using all the techniques employed so far in producing four finished pieces. I would like to do some horses and the inside of an old barn and some landscapes similar to ones I saw at the Printmakers exhibition.

Haven't handed in my first module yet after eight months which has caused me to take stock. I don't like having a non existent tutor that you can't interract with but then if I haven't sent any work to her yet what do I expect? I don't like the on Line learning log although I chose it because it's not my preferred way of doing things (I like note books) but I wanted to get outside my comfort zone. On top of this printing is a completely new technique I am painstakingly trying to learn and I am also trying to achieve a quality of work that matches that I did for my Watercolour course for which I got an 'A' which is unrealistic (or is it?) considering I spent years learning how to paint water colours before I ever started the OCA course.

To be fair to myself I have had a slipped disc and sciatica this autumn which was a distraction and at the end of February I lost my job which initially I thought would give me more time but I actually spent most of it worrying and looking for a new job, which I have now found. Also my band have had some dates abroad and some recording to finish which has meant time rehearsing and writing material.

So I now find, after 8 months, that I have completed Project One of Module One of a five module course ie. a fortieth of the overall course!! Having said this the course is supposed to take 400 hours and the project I have done 10 hours but I have spent nearly 50 hours on it.

What have I to show for this time? About 30 A3 monoprints and a series of preparatory sketches and photographs which isn't bad for the time spent. I have at least 2 prints I think are quite good. I've also got to grips with the inks, the rollers, the techniques of this type of mono printing and worked out how to do things like registering. I've also done some things like stencilling that are part of later projects. So none of this is wasted and will pay dividends later on.

The next two projects are about mastering stencilling techniques using a single image which I should be able to complete quite quickly as it requires very little creative development other than in originating the image.

The image I have in mind comes from an excellent life drawing session I took part in recently with a pregnant female model. I generated several very interesting drawings which I will refine to a single outline for use as a stencil.

The final project in this module requires me to produce monoprints using the techniques in question from four diverse subjects. This will involve much more creative input so whilst I am completing the two stencil projects I need to be thinking in parallel about ideas for the final project.

The Royal Society of Printmakers exhibition starts at the Bankside gallery on 7th May and it would be great to finish the stencil project by then so that I can use the exhibition as a stimulus for the final project.

The bad news is that between now and then I have a new job to start and an Art exhibition to organise for my local Art Society plus framing my own paintings. Nothing I can't handle.

Taking impetus from the Bankside exhibition (for which I will include an entry in this log) I want to spend a lot of time, maybe May, June and possibley July completing project four. I want the work for this project to be up to the standard of my watercolours ie. exhibitable.

The next Module, which is basically introducing Linocuts, I'd like to finish by the end of September, spend the rest of 2010 doing Module 3 (Advanced and Experimental Relief Prints) and then I have until the end of Setember 2011 to complete Modules 4 and 5.

So completing the course and getting an 'A' is still possible!

Saturday 13th February

Tried out my new oil based inks on Saturday. What a difference. The drying time is mach slower so you can work it longer and paint back into a plate that's been used over and over again to get more textural and gradiated effects.

Mixing the ink with linseed oil changes the quality again and makes it flow more easily.

I did some cats which are ok but I need to work out my colour schemes more which I will I be doing this week, I also need to absorb what I have learned and put it into practise next time. So I'm going to pause for a while.

What I can do in the meantime is try some of my still lifes but using oil inks and maybe smaller than A3 for a change.

At the start of my work on Saturday I tried messing around with blue circles in oil based ink to simulate water. The circles got smaller nearer the top of the paper to create recession. I then thought I could paint these over some orange gold fish and it would look like goldfish in a pond so I did some and put them to one side.

After about three hours on other work I had the idea to use gestural marks done in water based ink over the top of the oil based (because obviously it would resist the water) and to try to get that fluid feeling that you get with using very wet ink. I was pleased with the result which is quite abstract yet recognisable as fish in a pond. I have shown it here.

The colours worked really well and my learning from this is that I need to make better colour choises to get the most out of my ideas. I'm going to collect examples of great colour combinations from magazines and put them in my scrap book for reference.

Pipped - Linocut by Dale Devereux Barker

Print Workshop - Saturday Morning 6th Feb, Ipswich

As a surprise birthday present my sister in law bought me a lino cut workshop. I was sceptical at first but it turned out to be one of the best birthday presents ever! The tutor was Dale Devereux Barker who is a fellow of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers amongst other things and he really knew his stuff.

He fined us £1 if we referred to the inks as 'paint' and used profesional lithographic printers inks which were very viscous and oil based. He showed us how to roller out the ink until it stopped making that sticky sound and became satin in appearance. We then applied the ink to blank blocks of lino and printed them on proper printing paper using a hand press. We then over printed using stencils made out of paper or found objects like feathers.

I was amazed at how precise the printed images of feathers were and how flat and even the printed colours were. Of course you can go on to use second generations of print from the same block or spray vegatable oil onto the block or contaminate it with talcum powder to give special textured effects too.

What made it all work, unlike my own attemps at home, was a subtle combination of using the right inks. in the right way, on the right paper and with the right press. I have to admit that I have been finding water based inks very frustrating as they dry too quickly and give a very poor quality print (unless that is the quality you want).

Also we worked very small, Dales view being that the larger you go the less consistensy you will acheive because most of the pressure from the press is in the centre. He showed us some of his own work done with lots of small, blocks combined to make a larger print and this is something I will try.

For the second half of the morning we worked on cutting the lino to produce images and then going back to the block and removing more lino and printing again in another colour. Reduction method.

I also found that where I had marked the lino with red felt pen it came out on the print and this is a technique I will use also.

Following the course I tried to get some oil based inks from an art shop and managed to get a small tin of White. I have since tracked down the supplier and ordered five more colours.

I tried buying some professional lithographic ink from a company I tracked down on Google but they seemed almost reluctant to sell it to me saying it probably wouldn't dry if I didn't use a proper printing press! I find this hard to beleive and have contacted Dale to find out who he gets his inks from.

Dale suggested that I get in touch with print firms in the Watford area where I live and ask if I can dive into the skip that they throw their empty print tubs into. Apparently they usually leave quite useable amounts in them and this could be a useful source of free ink. So I'm off to Watford Printers Ltd.

I'm also going to get some proper printing paper from John Purcell Paper in Stockwell as I feel the extra fine and shiny, brilliant white cartridge paper I have been using is probably hindering my efforts.

I don't think the printing I have done so far has been wasted, I just think I should be aware of the characteristics of both water based and oil based inks and use both, in combination if necessary, where a prticular effect is required.

I've posted some of Dales work here as I like it very much.

Christmas Period

I finally got down to some more printing over the extended break and have managed about two hours a day on about seven occasions with gaps in between. The problem is also that I have to work in a shed in the garden which has no electricity so I either have to be on holiday or do it at the weekend. Learning a new skill is always frustrating to start with and progress seems slow.

I started with mark making experiments applying the paint to the plate with a variety of objects and varying the consistency with medium. I am working almost exclusively in A3 as I don't want to feel cramped and frankly I think anything less than A4 at this stage just wouldn't work. I am begining to gain some understanding of the ways you can create a textured effect with monoprints.

I am also learning that the white area where there is no paint is as expressive as the area with paint and to plan for these negative shapes and negative textural qualities.

From exercises I moved on to still lifes of a wooden bowl, an orange and an aluminium jug and I did about fifteen or more of these just to explore the feel of the medium more and to grasp how to convey an image.

I find that working with the limitations of monoprint and playing to it's strengths as a medium is the best way to get results. It doesn't work if you impose on it, the accidents are often the best bits and recreating them so that they are not accidents is probably the key!

I experimented with templates drawn in pencil and placed under the plate as a guide and to help register subsequent applications of paint and this was a useful technique. I also did some drawings in indian ink with a stick from a template and then using the same template monprinted over the top. I could of course have just drawn over the monoprint but this didn't occur to me and anyway I liked the effect I got from the accidental mis registration.

I did several versions of these 'line and wash' images trying to develop low tonal key colour schemes that worked sensitively with each other. I made colour notes in my note book for later use.

Tone is a consideration and I have mainly kept to low tonal keys of broken textural nature with white paper breaking through. I probably need to try some of these but with an over print of solid darker paint in some areas. To be frank I am getting bored with oranges, jugs and bowls so I'm going to move on to a different subject.

I saw a birthday card done in watercolour of a cat trying to get a fish out of a pond. It was one cat shaped splodge for the cat with another slightly violet splodge for the shadow and white bits of paper left to denote the cat's white paws and face. I've done some sketches, photos and watercolours of my own cat with a view to doing something similar as a monoprint. I'll probably do quite a lot of them until I get it right.

Hopefully my next post will include some pics of this work.