Award and books and manic May

Welcome to my manic May; 4 printmaking days, book making, Living Crafts at Hatfield House, a stand at the House and Garden Asthma Fair at Chilford Hall, Linton near Cambridge, a weekend being Granny, tennis tournament, a couple of art exhibitions and.... most exciting of all.....my son Will coming back from Oz via Los Angeles and Vancouver for a few weeks!! Can't wait!!

Last week I had a lovely surprise, Miriam at 77 Belle awarded me the Liebster blog award for a blog she likes to read, started for blogs with less than 200 followers; another thankyou Miriam if you are reading this! I'll be looking out for blogs to pass on the award to.

I am on a course with Gina of Fan My Flame making books, here are a few of the results.

We started with simple and then more complicated folded books.

The next one is made with one piece of A3 paper.

Here's Gina showing us how to do it!

I used a map of Canada for the covers and saw a place KITCHENER, along with lots of other English place names, as it's my maiden name I made sure to use it, just folding and glueing the piece of map to slip over the book to keep it closed.

I like this structure that you can slip pages into the folds.

One without the pages in.

A few weeks ago I was lucky to receive this book from Lesley at Printed Material.

I thought I'd make a similiar one...

...it has a cover cut from one of my prints,

with map 'slots' holding pieces of different prints,

which could be written on the back.

The gift tags I sell could fit into the slots as well, or a larger version with pieces of plain paper would make an interesting note or sketch book. There are not enough hours in the day!!!!

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Recent exhibitions and visits

In March I too went to the David Hockney exhibition at the RA and actually took 2 photos before I was told they weren't allowed, but now I can't find them - an inspiring show; so on to the London Print Fair which I decided to go to last Friday at the last minute. I'm so glad I went, a real feast for the eyes. It was easy to walk round (unlike the Hockney) so you could spend time having a close look at prints and the people manning the stands were friendly and approachable; even though I wasn't spending £42,000 on a beautiful Sybil Andrews print!!!! I've liked her work for a few years, I had no idea how 'in' work by the artists of the Grosvenor school is.

A selection of work by Sybil Andrews and Cyril Powers.

I loved these buildings  by Kristian Krokfors.

 

Exciting work by Paula Rego.

What fun!! I haven't finished yet by Phil Shaw, £1,650 and some more of his work....



This dog is obviously a character, I don't remember the artist.

This porcelain piece was so clever.

This alphabet of London by Tobias Till was outstanding; imagine the hours these prints took!

I coveted the china with  Eric Ravilious designs, the boat race bowl was £4,200 (just in case you see one in a junk shop!), a guy had just bought it. The Coronation mug was only £1,000.

Altogether a great day, even if it was raining when I left. On the way to King's Cross (quite glamourous now) I bought sushi for supper and relaxed with a coffee on the train. I do love my retirement!!! By the way, welcome to my new 'followers'! Do please mention my blog to your fellow artists/ friends.

This and that....

When I collected my book binding press late last year I was given this lovely embosser by Les Baynam, who runs Homeward Bound, a company specialising in book binding and printing presses.

 A friend kindly cleaned it up for me and I intend to get my own stamp made for it;I don't want to be known as Dover Corporation Electricity Department! It's a fine piece of Victoriana which looks lovely in my studio.

I recently submitted work to The Cambridge Drawing Society - http://www.cambridgedrawingsociety/ - and was elected as a member. One of my lino cuts was selected for the exhibition at the Guildhall in Cambridge which ended last Saturday. It was an interesting exhibition which made the news due a painting being stolen at the private view!! Luckily the police recovered it! My print wasn't sold but lots were, which seems to be unusual at the moment. Being a member means that next year I can enter 4 works and they run another exhibition in the Autumn.



Print day at the Curwen

It's over a month since I wrote a post; I've had a really uncreative period and am hoping with Spring blossoming all around me my creativity will too! My March print day with my group at the Curwen was fun as usual, here are the rest of the group; there are 6 of us.

Maria and Kate, both screen printing Queens......

I only managed to get a photo of Jacque as she was packing up.....

Mike talking to Sue Jones, our tutor, and Jenny in the background....

and Jenny working out on the etching press!

I played around with some mono prints using fabrics and stencils of cups and jugs. Basically you ink up your metal plate and plonk/carefully place bits of fabric/stencilson before putting though the etching press using slightly damp paper; you can over print, take a pale 'ghost' print etc. and of course anything you end up with is unique.

    I chose a pinky red and grey inks.......

just before lifting the stencils off a print.... 

and a print using the inky stencils and scrim, shame the jug isn't clearer but it was fun playing around.

I ended up with 2 or 3 prints I will mount and/or frame.....



A jug and cups series I think, and a few prints to work on next time....like this one...

and I ended up with some scrim and stencils that I can use for a collage maybe?......

all good fun!

Japanese Woodblock Printmaking Course

On that freezing cold Saturday in February I went on a printing course at Artworks Mk in Great Linford, Milton Keynes. It was a beautiful drive with the trees covered in frost. I really wanted to take lots of photographs at home but it took me ages to defrost the car and I didn't want to be late for the course.

It was a wonderful setting, as you can see from the photographs.

This is the cafe, exhibition centre and reception building.

The beautiful hall in the park.

Great Linford church.

The course was with Laura Boswell, a printmaker whose work I love. If you don't know of her, take a look at her website. www.lauraboswell .co.uk

Laura demonstrated at Art in Action last year. She learnt water based woodblock printing in Japan during an 8 week residency with a master carver and printer.

I have done some wood cutting but this process is very different from inking up a block with a roller. It is an ancient printing form in Japan and comes with all the rituals one would expect from that country. There are special cutting tools (similiar to lino cutting tools) and a clever, precise way of registering prints.

Laura suggested we started with a simple design that we could complete in a day.

I settled on a simple landscape, which we drew and then transferred to tracing paper, all with an exact frame drawn to relate to the size of paper we were using. Carbon paper was used to transfer the design onto the block.

This would be cut as 3 blocks, mine could be fitted on one piece of ply. The initial outline is cut with a hanghi to.

Cutting in progress and below the tools.

My cutting finished. The notches for each block are the kento slots for registering your prints.

Laura demonstrating placing the Nori paste (made from rice flour) onto the block....

and mixing the water colour paint with the Nori paste on the block...

The printing is done by hand, using a baren, the paper proteced by a piece of silicone paper.

Here's my block with 2nd block inked up ready for proofing, which Laura does on lining paper.

Here are 2 blocks printed....

the 3rd block ready to print....

and the proof....

I then experimented with colours on Fabriano paper; by the way, this method always uses damp paper, which needs to be kept damp throughout the printing.

and a close up....

This has some splodgy edges where I had too much paint/ Nori paste but OK for a first attempt. It is an interesting process which takes endless practise to get a feel for the method.

Laura says 'It can be unforgiving, wasteful and often tiresome, but the end result is so wonderful that it really is worth the effort.'

Obviously in a day we learnt the basics; colours can be built up by printing layers of colour and there are effects such as bokachi (shading) to give more depth or texture.

It was a lovely day and I enjoyed learning the processes of this ancient Japanese art form. I have to mention what a good tutor Laura was, highly organised and it was one of the best courses I've taken.

I have all the tools now.....