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.