A bit of this and that......

A couple of weeks ago 3 lovely people came to my studio for their second lino day. Again we achieved a lot in a day, all making progress with some of the further processes that are possible with lino printing.

Jane is brushing off loose pieces of lino before inking up her tulips, using a rainbow roll of 3 different reds. A strong, graphic design which worked very well, as you can see.



To achieve the 2 colours of Louise's jug we cut the lino block in 2 parts, using a scalpel. I forgot to take a photo, but here Louise is inking up the jug part of the block with prussian blue.

The yellow tablecloth part of the print was inked up as a separate block and printed by carefully placing the block over the jug print. A really lovely print.

To achieve what Nettie wanted, she needed to print some backgrounds first, using a round stencil to mask out the moon. Difficult to over print in a day, due to drying time but we speeded it up with a hair dryer. Ideally you would leave a print to dry for a couple of days but it can take even longer.

 Nettie is about to place the inked up block on to the background before putting it on the press; here we have the lovely hare print.

Pepper, the latest arrival here slept most of the lino day, so far this seems to be the favourite chair in my studio.

Pepper is my one of my daughter's 3 cats; he had been a naughty cat at their house and has come to live with me. So far he is behaving and I'm enjoying having a cat around again. Our family cats were always tabbies and my last one died some years ago aged 17; the same month as I had to have my 15 year old labrador, Gypsy, put down. While I was working I felt I couldn't leave young animals on their own for long days so have been animal free. I've decided that now a dog would be a tie, so a 5 year old cat is ideal. I'm hoping he won't catch, or put off, the birds in my garden. After the print day there was a sheet of blue ink left on the table drying - Pepper investigated and left his mark as he wandered across the table!

                               

Luckily they were just example prints waiting to be printed over and can be cleaned off this piece of lino! I will need to get used to a cat in the house!!



Fabric printing course part 1

Recently I went on a great screen printing on fabric course at Cottenham Village College with a friend Annie, who had been to this before. The tutor was Ricki Outis, who was a super teacher, sharing ideas and techniques with great enthusiasm.

 Fellow 'students' were mainly experienced screen printers and it was good to see everyone's work during the week. I'd done a little block printing on fabric but no screen printing, only on paper. Obviously it's very similiar; it was interesting to transfer ideas onto fabric. I hoped to print a curtain for my studio door, using a design I'd tried out on paper. I'd had my plant designs put onto thermofax screens and used paper stencils for the landscape shapes.

Work in progress...I'd spent the evening before working out my 'plan' with masking tape, it was supposed to make it easier!!

It was tricky working with the size; it was a vintage cotton sheet, one of a pair I found in it's original wrapping, a relic from my family childhood home long ago - good recycling!

The finished item; spot the 'deliberate' mistake when I'd changed colours, washed my screen and then forgot to put a new stencil underneath! I thought of various ideas to disguise it but now I'm rather fond of my yellow rectangle and will sign my name on the panel when I find my permanent marker pen which has done a disappearing act since I used it the other day.

My lovely young builder Matt put up the curtain rail this morning. I'd made the curtain up the other day, with interlining and lining (a reminder of the time when I made soft furnishings for clients) and put the heading tape on today when I knew the length. I'm really pleased with the end result; I like the border down the sides and bottom edge..

A complete one-off: quite exciting!

Chaos reigns - Open Studio soon!

I love working in my studio, it's a lovely room that was a large dining room when I bought this house. In those days I made soft furnishings for clients and it was ideal for laying out the enormous curtains I was making. When I returned to teaching it reverted to being a dining room plus teaching prep. place. On my retirement - hooray!! I at last had time for my art so it became my studio, which soon seemed too small. I decided to make it bigger by using the store room behind it, which involved knocking down a wall! Here it is before the building work, this was my Open Studio Christmas 09.

The wall has been knocked down!! It was great to see the extra space I would have, with the window and the door to the garden. 

But what a mess! this was my 3rd phase of building work last year, all dovetailed round my open studio events by my builder Matt. It was all worth it!!

How big it looks with not much in!!

Fantastic to get my books organised.

So that's how my studio came into being. Back to a different sort of chaos!!

I even had help one morning from my grandson Barney, just 1 year old!

With Barney starting to crawl, it will be fun in my studio!!

Cambridge Open Studios happens over 4 weekends in July. I am opening for 3 weekends, the 1st one July 2nd and 3rd. I've tried to get ready early as I'm also preparing for my end of course exhibition in July. Another day at the Curwen tomorrow, week 8 which is a personal development day. I must sort out what I'm going to do. I'm so tired I nearly fell asleep watching the tennis earlier!!