Vikings

Hello,
I realise I've been neglecting my blogging duties, so here are a couple of new drawings.

They are studies for etchings involving the Jorvik Viking Festival in York, a large group of history fans who like to dress up and recreate the days when York got its cultural identity ;-)

This is a group of 'Viking' lads waiting for the signal to march into battle against the 'soppy Saxons'. I really like the interaction between them, as one guy tries in vain to get a note out of the authentic horn two stand round laughing, and the other looks out at us.

This is a very rough watercolour painting which shows a plan for the next print. Its quite basic and gestural because I was trying to understand the essence of the image. Actually, as I'm typing an idea has come to make a smaller secondary print in this style as the various marks and roughness would work at about 15x15cm (I'll keep that one running in the old subconscious, usually the answer pops up like toast).

These are my favourite photos taken that day:

York Open Studios sketch

York Open Studios has just finished, and I'm getting my energy back, as the illustration commission has just finished too. Phew. The event was very good, and as it was my first time things went very well, sold prints and postcards, and also had some lovely conversations with people about art and sketching.


While it was quiet I did a sketch of the venue. The first is just pen, and the second is watercoloured last week. Its size is c.50x20cm.

Pre- York Open Studios

I'm just getting my work ready for the York Open Studios show, and the house looks like an explosion in a paper factory.
As this is my first year as an exhibiting artist and having an illustration job to finish its all rather 'scatty' and feel like I'm flying on by the seat of my pants.
Today has been labelling, wrapping, organising. Tomorrow will be hanging the pictures, and laying everything out ready for the opening on friday. And finally on Friday I will be taking all my loose prints down to the venue, as I don't want ALL my work in someone elses home, because it took 8 months to make.

Only slightly stressed... I will tell you all how it went after the 10th, when its all over.

York Open Studios

Hi,
sorry for the lack of posts, I'm right in the middle of an illustration commission, and getting work ready for the York Open Studios event. Here are some links to see what the event is about:

York Open Studios

Rebecca Wright | Artists & Makers | York Open Studios

and my good friend, whom I rent studio time from:
Catherine Sutcliffe-Fuller | Artists & Makers | York Open Studios

and my photography tutor from college:
Peter Heaton | Artists & Makers | York Open Studios

2 more Evil Eye prints

The Evil Eye Lounge print has now been given its aquatint, and has turned out very well. The first picture is a very dark version, to give extra mood, the third is a burnt umber and sanguine ink edition, and the final is a watercoloured version of the print from the previous post.

I've decided to stop trying to do identical prints as I was starting to feel like a machine. While talking to another artist we were discussing the desire to do different wipes for each print, keeping the creativity and originality going beyond the creation of the plate.

Evil Eye Lounge- print stage 1

This is the print of the previous drawing for The Evil Eye Lounge, in York. It measures 45x28.5cm, and took 3 hours to carefully draw out onto the waxed plate, then bitten for 8mins in the acid.

On saturday it will have an aquatint added, before then I'll be working/playing with watercolour on this print; Then uploading to this blog early next week. Hope it doesn't go tits-up.

Watercolour Reverie of Crouch Hill

While planning a new print of the old Crouch End, I started drifting into a watercolour reverie of the scene. Its not geographically correct but who cares when you're dreaming. The Aber Hotel seems to have completely disappeared, and there's an ominous cloud hanging over Holloway. 

One day I'll put all these Crouch End pictures onto a map and connect them together. It would take up a lot of wall space.

47x20cm

Evil Eye Lounge, now in colour

I've been working on this drawing for three days, it started as you know as a drawing, then I added watercolour, then thought about how I'd like to proceed and settled on colour pencil. There is a nod to Nevinson's Acetylene Welder print, (which blew me away at an exhibition of war-time art in Sheffield last year).
Here's a link with info to the Nevinson artwork:
http://www.vam.ac.uk/

The image is 48x30cm, and has pencil, watercolour, and Derwent Colour Pencil. Next week I'm hoping to make an intaglio print version for the York Open Studios in April.

http://www.yorkopenstudios.co.uk/

The Evil Eye Lounge, York.

This is quite a large drawing, from some film I took of the staff at The Evil Eye Lounge, York (eccentric cocktail bar and Thai restaurant). It took about two days to draw and involved lots of rubbing out and corrections, quite a test. Its roughly 48x30cm and drawn on Somerset watercolour paper with a very sharp Power Rangers pencil! Its going to be a large print as I'm only reducing it down to 45x28cm, so I can get the detail and also some thicker lines and of course, IMPACT. 

Latest etching of 'Scary Trees'

Here's the latest print, based on Levens Hall topiary garden, showing the insides of their huge hedge which you can just about crawl inside, giving the impression of a Sleeping Beauty style thorny hedge. The print is 30x33cm and uses intaglio line work, which took a day to carefully scribe (first image), and then aquatint with an element of open bite (second image).

Cross Process and iPhone photo apps

During the frost I discovered a photographic technique called Cross Process. If you are a photographer you will know about it, but to laymen it is processing positive colour film (slide film) in colour negative chemicals. Beautiful and other-worldly colour mixes are created, often involving happy accidents. I discovered a way of doing this in Photoshop, and applied it to my frozen plant pictures.
This is the link if you want to try it yourself:
Cross Processing in Photoshop - color negative art effect | PhotoshopSupport.com

These are my images:

Blue cross process

Brown cross process

Green and brown cross process (my favourite)

If you have an iPhone4 there are a bunch of apps which help this process and save time. 

RetroCamera and Mill Colour are pretty good. PictureShow is loads of fun and does all sorts of other natty things, the image below was made with it.

PictureShow 2.3

My favourite app is Hipstamatic, which has lots of lenses, films and flashes to use and experiment with.

Hipstamatic iPhone App - Digital Photography Never Looked So Analog

'The coldest winter EVER' say the papers

North Yorkshire (*map) has experienced the hardest frost since records began. Temperatures dropped for several days to -18ºC at night and laid a fluffy crust of frost crystals on every plant. During this period I went to the printmaking studio and discovered the water in the bath and pipes was frozen hard, and the heater could puff out warmth only 12" before Jack Frost pushed it back with his giant shield of chilled air. So I went home. Booo. yes, but I will return, hopefully Monday, as the temperature has risen to 6ºC! 

To keep the work flowing and find new print ideas I waded into the garden and took some photos of the frost (cue the Edward Scissorhands music).

*map of UK with North Yorkshire

One print, two stages

These two are the first and last stages of a small etching. If you know my prints I like em dark and moody! Some may say that its too dark, but its just my old goth nature expressing itself in the work.

The print size is 30x13cm.

The King's Head pub, Crouch End

This the final drawing done while in Crouch End. I drew it while supping a lemon cooler in All Bar None, across the road from The King's Head pub. It is 33x29cm and drawn with Tombow brush pens and watercolour.

Remembered sketches of Crouch End

I've just been using my Neocolour I crayons, and embellishing some drawings. These are drawn in a rough and carefree way while being carried along by Janelle Monáe's The Archandroid album.

This picture is the typical house in Crouch End, kind of made to look like an island.

This picture is the views as I walked from the flat to Finsbury Park station (not in any order of course)

1.The Blue corner shop, 2. The blue corner shop with eccentric choice of painted gates.

3.The tunnel down to the platforms at Finsbury Park Station. 4. Outside the station, with The Railway pub on the right. 5. Waiting at the bus stop with the eery green lighting under the bridge. 6. The view down the hill, showing the Emirates Stadium in middle distance and the City of London in the background. 

quiet

Hello,
sorry its been quiet, I've been moving house, trying to get some work done and tidying the bombsite that is all the stuff from the old flat. Normal service will be resumed next week. ta-da.

Playtime with Hamlet

Here are a few versions I made of the print in the earlier Hamlet post. They are all made with Photoshop, and are just meant to be bit of fun and to see what sort of different versions I could make in colour.

Hamlet at the Crucible, Sheffield

Last weekend I saw Hamlet at The Crucible Theatre in Sheffield. It was a very strong and emotional, spooky and chilling performance. I've been communicating with one of the cast (who runs a blog on the life of an actor) and sent him the print shown below as a thankyou. Yes, inspired to make a print just on the strength of a play!
I'm glad he liked it, and so did the rest of the cast apparently. The cast included: John Simm as Hamlet, John Nettles as Claudius, Barbara Flynn as Gertrude, and not forgetting Alexander Vlahos as Barnardo (and top blogger).

The print is 23x23cm and was created quite quickly to express the vitality and emotion of the play.
The scratchy lines and the roughly applied aquatint tones at the bottom right have opened up my desire to be more free and expressive in my work.

Across the road

Hi,

sorry I've not blogged for a while, but here's a bumper crop of prints and drawings to make up for it.

This next print is of the view from across the road to my old flat in London. Yes, I've fallen in love with the countryside and have dumped London.

The print is 30x13cm.

Primrose Bakery print

This is another London-based print, of Primrose Bakery, Tavistock Street, Covent Garden. I posted a drawing of the cafe a few months ago. The print has more drawing than earlier prints, after the aquatint disaster a fortnight ago I decided to concentrate on drawing to show the scene, rather than using complicated tones to describe the shapes and areas of light and dark. This also means I can draw on the plate at home and really take my time, then bring it in to bite in the print studio.

Some colour will be added with watercolour, just a couple, such as yellow for the door and some tulips, and pink for the girl's apron.

www.primrosebakery.org.uk

A small drawing for a future print

This is a little drawing for a future print. Its roughly 16x16cm, and will be 30x30cm as the print. I wanted to understand the scene, and by drawing it roughed out how the print would look.
The drawing and the original photo are side by side, to give you an idea of the tranformation in my head.

Mrs Fix-it on Friday.

Recently, I have been experiencing trouble with my prints, ie the darkness is way too light. After hours of study from various books, websites and friends, and sleepless nights there was just one thing for it; do some tests. It would seem, that either the plate hasn't been in the rosin box* and/or the metal is milled densely, therefor the acid needs more time to bite into it. ugh. 

We all stood round the plates, comparing a good plate to a weak one, our fingers stroking the rosined (aquatinted) areas. We looked like a Glen Baxter cartoon. After much chin stroking we deduced (like Sherlock) that a good strong aquatint tone feels like sandpaper on the plate, and so I had to bite the plate for much longer.

*big monster box with powdered pine sap whirling round and settling on plate like snow to make a resist against the acid, so making tiny dots of resist which helps the ink stick to and so making a lovely dark tone. 

This one, 'Tabletop' (300x134mm), is from a drawing of the table in my flat, where breakfast, the computer, letters and a Xmas tree have to share the space. Not a lot of room. The first version of the print was very pale, the start of trouble with acid bite times. so, instead of re-applying the aquatint, I decided to do close hatching and redrawing with a compass point on soft ground, then put in the nitric acid for about 8mins. it worked and so everything is good again.

The print above is called 'Gnarly Trees I' (265x440mm) , and was put in acid for a second time. This time I re-applied the aquatint and put in the acid for 16mins. Mammoth time I know, but this metal seems to be quite dense.

The Old-school Drawing Test

This is quite an old drawing, from 2008, done to test my skills in drawing. You know, you've been doing graphics for a bit, and oops, have I got rusty? Well, thankfully not, I summoned up all my self-control and paid attention to the pile of shoes in the middle of the floor.
I have a feeling its going to be a print...

Dark drawing for gnarly trees

I was working on this last night, while listening to the XX... It was started last week as a study for the latest print, as a way for ideas to come and to understand the subject matter. It is 19.5x38cm.
It puts me in mind of the Moomin illustrations and a bit of Mervyn Peake drawings.

"House of the Trembling Madness" bistro

This is a lovely medieval building in York, which has such an atmosphere of eccentricity and history. Everything is at an odd angle through movement over 600 years, and the little windows to the right give a great view towards the Minster.
The drawing was done there, which I prefer now because you get a stronger sense of place. Then I watercoloured it and finally gave it some extra definition with Neocolour I crayons.

Candy Cakes, London

Another slightly chaotic drawing, which was done at the Cafe Candy Cakes, Monmouth Street in Covent  Garden. Then took it home to add watercolour, then jazzed it up today with Neocolour I crayons. The drawing is 50x20cm on Khadi paper. It may become an etching in the next month, there's a giant piece of zinc about to be cut up for etchings.

Seven Dials/Covent Garden is my favourite part of London, and a link below shows you what you can find there:
www.sevendials.co.uk

Gnarly Trees

Good morning, and here's the latest print, a study of gnarly trees inside a huge hedge. The hedge (in Levens Hall Gardens, Cumbria) is 30ft tall and supported by thick stakes. It is very spooky in there, very reminiscent of Grimms fairy tales, which I wanted to show in the style. After working in publishing the print has a subconscious 'storybook' quality, and also employing my usual bold dark lines. The plate took a day to make, and is 45x27cm, my largest so far. After making small prints I really wanted to stretch out and make something with a lot of instant impact. 

The print may have darker tones added next week just to give it extra punch.