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.