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.