More things to do

7. The City - Having lived in London and Brighton and seen all the visual spectacle they have to offer, I would love to get back in to the grimy magnificence of the metropolis and do some cityscapes. 

It has of course to be a megopolis, London, Birmingham definitely New York ( Any invites gratefully received ).. Below a print of the outskirts of Cardiff I produced for a series the 'Taff Trial.' I really enjoyed playing with the pattern and abstracted shapes in the tower block. Really whet my appetite for a bit more hot tower on tarmac action..

Llandaff North. Cardiff

 8. The Meaning of Landscape - A bit more intellectual and long term this one. What makes certain landscapes special, what attaches a meaning to a piece of ground, what is it that makes part of the  'landscape' a 'view' therefore special and so worth preserving or just ground of no consequence. Is the appearance of the land importance or its connection to those who associate with it. How does a completely false man made landscape (Most of the countryside in the UK ) become the symbol of all things 'natural'  and something to be protected against mans perfidious interference? Aspects of memory, history, personal  involvement. How different cultures see their relationship with the land on which they live. An investigative path that will have to include the indigenous arts of Australasia, having as they do a completely different take on the meaning of the landscape.

9. Play Misty for me - Moving away from the crisp clear lines I am partial to and look at suggestion, hint, half seen and obscure. Experiment with more ephemeral prints aiming to capture the appearance, or not, of mist, a landscape glimpsed through heavy rain, evening light and other obscurities.

10. Multi Block - A step on from reduction print? having a go at prints in whichb I can play with the things that cannot be done on a single chunk of lino. Playing with texture, being able to cut continous lines and patterns and then overlay more pattern and areas of texture without worrying about the restrictions of the previous or following layers.

As previously mentioned I have cut out the keyblock for my first multiblock. Typically I couldn't have a go at a test A4 print, oh no I've cut out an A2 multi that will need at least four sheets.

Offsetting the key onto the transfer sheet

11. Outside broadcast - Take the lino block outside and draw directly onto the block to hopefully keep the loose quality of the draw line. Avoids the deadening effect on the spontaneous drawn line of tracing the image from sketch to block. There is of course the reversing of the image through direct printing, so the subject matter must be something that is not affected by orientation. Just a great composition of a simple image.

12. Portrait - An attempt at expressive portraits, looking at old black and white images of tribal societies, reference books on tattoo portraits, criminal mugshots. Old staged photo's from the early days of photography. Or, as here, a print from the early days of my printmaking:

Amy

   

In with the new.

A Happy New 2012 to all printmakers,

After finishing the old year by showing an unfinished print, the last of my Chough suite, I better start this new year by showing the finished article, with the final black keyline over the top. I nice end to the three prints around the common Chough theme. They worked well together, which sent me back thinking about triptychs, quatrychs, triptych spreads and even a temporal triptych.

I have just realised I have shown the beginning and the end but not the middle. So here is the middle of the Chough. Print number two:

As with the other two, a bit of experimentation with printing the sky. Which I will look at in more detail when I show the layer breakdown.

No New Year printmaker resolutions as such then, just a very keen desire to get a move on and try out some of that stuff really. As well as the Multiblock keyline cut I showed last post sitting resplendent in my new registration block, ( Still clean shiny and unused) So like the stuff inspired by the Chough suite I have a whole list of things I have been scribbling in my little black book of scribbles ' n ' things.

I need to get on and start something because the longer I leave it the longer the list grows as one idea leads to another. A bit like this blog really.

Heres a quick list of some of the scribbles, for action in 2012 :

1. Temporal Triptych - Little idea I had after doing my 'Llyn movement in the movement' research, [ Oho yet another story to catch up on, I got a Arts Council Wales grant and everything for that one which dealt with trying to work out how to show movement in the essentially static carved medium of Lino.]  So a triptych is a scene spread through three images, my temporal triptych would aim to show the same scene spread though three images showing how the scene changed over time. Thinking mainly waves crashing on rocks. As the form of both the wave and the rock seem to change drastically as the fluid form of the one wraps around the solid shape of the other.

2. Triptych spread -  More of your standard trippie here. A wide long view divided up across three separate prints which and, heres the rub, must work dramatically and compositionally as individual units but then fit together to display as one. Got a whole lot of ideas here to do with shorelines, lakes etc.

3. Quatrych - Is there such a thing, similar to the Triptych but rather than three in a line with this fella you have four arranged in a square, so it really is just a scene enlarged to be huge and then printed in four smaller pieces to be manageable. Nothing special here really other than just wanting to see four prints arranged together to make up a whopper. Which leads to:

4. A Whopper - Same kind of scale as the above, but in one large print. A1 even A0 size, and for further dramatic effect feel that something so big must have a contrastingly simple and bold subject matter. Almost abstract. Like a single boulder and wave, or lone sheep, something like that. So I can really lose myself and get carried away cutting texture and pattern within a very simple form.

5. Expressionist - ( direct from notebook ) "More emotive expressive picture, Hand drawn direct on to the block, very scribbly and loose - drawn with big permanent marker - simple subjects. Black dog -  rough landscape." By black dog I do both mean an actual black dog and the symbolic 'Black dog' which represents depression and ultimately death and is often reported by those suffering from, initially, one and worried about the other. A dog that I have seen on one very strange occasion!


6. Story - A longer term project is that of telling a tale, a story through a consecutive series of prints. Initial ideas lean towards the biblical, as all good lapsed catholics tend to, fairy tale, same thing really, biographical, more fairy stories or an updating and development of these images my 'American Series.' Seen here in the light of a virtual day for the very first time. They have been sleeping at the bottom of every folder, file or plan chest in which I store my work since their creation over a decade ago. Back in the day when most of my work was figurative and before my 'escape to Wales'

"Strange Fruit" American 5

"Daily Bread" American 10

"X" American 11

They started as a wee rant against the USification of culture through good ole telly and the assumption we have in the UK of a complete knowledge of, and understanding about, America purely through its depiction on UK television, American film and the media.  I had a huge list of things I 'knew' about America, a collection of even bigger assumptions and newspaper clippings of the more extreme examples of American happenings.  I then starting to arrange them into a series of prints from the view point of a Brit impression of life in the US. Generally as accurate as thinking that all the English either live in Castles with butlers or are cockney geezers.

Each composition or layout was based on a classic painting, print or drawing and I tried to link each consecutive print by having a background detail become the subject for the following print. Or the main subject become the background detail of the following print.

Never did finish the whole series, but  finished enough to get shortlisted for a years residency in Roswell Artist in Residence, New Mexico. Maybe I'll come back to them and start again, maybe I will move on to something I have knocking about at the back of my head.  A new series based on the life and exciting times of Saint Bonaduce  ( Bon - a - juicy ) the first gay saint. Mainly because I want to have a go at some of the richness of religious imagery, contempory icons and use a whole load of gold leaf! May even build a saint out of brambles. Oooh the pain of thorns, the agony... It will be a multimedia extravaganza!

The registration is dead, long live The Registration

I have just finished the third in my Chough series, in which I experimented a little bit with cutting a sun in the evening sky. I think this is the first time I have actually depicted the sun in a composition by cutting it in to the colour rather than perhaps just smearing a bit of the ink away to suggest a highlight area of the sky.

Really not sure if it worked, For the first colour layer I only printed the sky area itself rather than the entire block as I normally do. With the previous Hodomura paper, especially the later batch with the hairy surface, a rollered out edge of ink as opposed to a cut edge would result in some rather nasty lifting of the papers surface at the boundary where the ink was thinnest. This print I am using the BFK Rives 250 gsm which is a much sturdier surface and so could stand the abuse. Here is the almost finished print, just the black edging and deep shadow to apply next.

I will show the full Chough suite in series in another post, but in this post I wanted to lament the end, probably, of the registration system I have used for the last ten years. The masking tape angles.

They had a lot of advantages, easy to set up if you had to print on the kitchen table and remove at dinner time. Slightly flexible and as a new set where put down for, and to the edges of, each block it didn't matter how irregular the lino block was they would fit perfectly. A simple easy to use system that nonetheless granted me, when I got it right, perfect registration.

Disadvantages included going through a shedload of masking tape, it was a bit of a faff to cut, stretch and stick down the little bits of tape each time, if the studio got a bit too warm they could lift off losing the registration. They could not be removed, once down, until the print was finished, or I could not start a print unless I knew I had the time to complete it without needing the table for something else.

I decided to try my first multiblock/reduction print, and of course couldn't start with a little A4 test but had to go for a large complicated beach scene from Pembrokshire in A2. I toiled to cut out the key block for days and days, offset the image onto a couple more of sheets of lino, was all ready to start cutting the other blocks then had to remove the registration marks for a three day course.

"If only..", I cursed ".. I could lift the reg marks off the table and put them down again unaltered" So I looked again at a method I have seen occasionally and which was used by Anne Mytton a printmaker who came on one of my 1:1 workshops and who lugged huge registration boards for her woodcuts up and down my stairs.

A quick chat with and visit to the proper workshop of a friend of mine Mark; joiner, builder and painter,  and I have my new, and as yet untried, method of registration.

A simple sheet of MDF with another thinner strip the height of the lino, a right angle, to hold the block and wide enough to hold a smaller angle on top to register the paper.

The next print will be done using this new, to me, method and I am intrigued as to how well it may work. I also like the idea that it forces me to trim my blocks square, and that I could work on a number of different prints at the same time. The next print should be the multi/reduction I have had floating around for a while now, but it may yet be something completely different.

Long live The Registration.

Up to date, hurrah (Happy now Sean??) NEW WEBSITE.

As mentioned in the previous post I have decided to get my Blog completely up to date by the simple method of immediately jumping forward through time to the present day and putting up the most recent event in my career calender. (Cheating I know)

I will drop in the important stuff I have chronologically overtaken as and when it arrives in the present day because there is some lovely stuff to share; a three day courses, a one to one session, a couple of new Pembrokeshire prints ( nice ) my first attempt at recovering a Baren ( Insanely and fiendishly difficult ), my first faltering steps at a multiblock/reduction print and a couple of days with the modern master of Japanese woodblock printmaking Laura Boswell who completely confounded and flummoxed me. With all that to recount you can see why I floundered in my attempt to keep up?

The main point of this first all new and gleaming up to date blog is however  to mention the launch, or relaunch, of my new and improved website:

http://www.reliefprint.co.uk/

A lot of work has been done by my partner Sian and Sean our friend to bring the site up to date, with bigger pictures, a simpler, streamlined choice of prints, links to this blog and my facebook page Reliefprint, a proper shop featuring my book, cards, new range of Giclee prints of sold out editions, links to the galleries featuring my work and information about current and forthcoming exhibitions. Have a look and let me know what you think.

As we can't leave without a picture here is a picture;

The first of my new series for my St Davids Studio Gallery exhibition next year, if there are any left by then. It is also the first of a set of three featuring the Choughs that ride the updraft along the coastal path. I will post the print stages in my next post, coming soon. (honest Sean)

No Seriously..

Lets try that again.

Answer; Here really is a really lovely picture of a tree, again, produced by Amanda Hillier. Who along with Rosey Bennet and Nga Smith (From the USA) came on my three day intensive course 10th - 12th October.

Amanda's Tree.

What I've decided to do with the backbloglog is all/none of the above. I was going to do a quick all in one go, catch up, precis. Apart from the odd thing I still want to do in more detail. Which I will drop in when, and where, the hell I like. But already in writing this and not posting it immediately I have far to much to catch up with in one go. So as I really wanted to get this particular course up on the blog, show the lovely work and talk about how lovely the guests where. ( Especially as one of the guests, Rosey, has just mailed me to ask how to find this blog. Ulp. Hi Rosey.) We will start again after this. Promise

Here is some more lovely work;

'Cherry head' By Rosey Bennet

It was a really enjoyable course, as always. As the two pictures here demonstrate there was some very striking work produced. The graduation in both pictures working really nicely. As sky in Amanda's and as background in Roseys. It really sets of the red, which we weren't sure would work that well over the top of the other blue/brown tones. This was a picture of a women with a hat full of cherries that that both Rosey and I agreed just had to be tried as a print. Having such a strong red caused some problems with colour layering. The green blue underneath in the graduation worked against the red a little bit but it works really well in the lips and for the fur collar.

A really striking print that has made me want to come back to playing with figurative and portraits. Watch out.

Post this... or this? what about THIS?

I'm sure it is a common enough problem with the blog, when things are a bit hectic out in the real world and the posts start lagging behind a bit. Result? A bit of a backbloglog, so the next time you have a couple of minutes spare you sit down to blog-up. Then realise you've got too much to catch up on in the time available. Sooo do you just do what you can now or put it off until you have enough time to do it all. Why the latter of course. Which also means by the time you sit down again even more has happened so you are even more behind. Thus needing even more time. Which is slightly more then the increased amount of time you have allocated. This time.

Question; Do you dash past a quick precis of all you have missed listing and then, up to date, deal with the most recent in more detail? Do the most recent first then keep on into the future but throw in the odd out of order past times as and when you can? Or pull your finger out, spend a bit of time catching up properly and promise never, EVER to get behind again.. Honest?

Answer: Here is a pretty picture of a tree ;

' Tree' by Amanda Hillier

Masterclass 2.

Last month was another trip up to the Royal Cambrian Academy at Conwy for the second masterclass in Linocut and another early start. Not something I usually have to worry about, not working as Ian the Postman anymore. That's another story, a long tale of early starts, heavy bags, huge breakfasts, despair at 02.00 am, and a papercut to make a samurai wince.


The nearest I get now is either, sometimes both in a miniature tag team, of my children jumping on my head to say good morning. Even then I don't actually get up. Of course when I say early I actually mean about 07.30 which is when most working people get up anyway so I don't expect any sympathy.


There has been a good response to these courses with both fully booked and even the waiting list having a waiting list, so linocut is certainly popular. The usual interesting mix of people, ages and abilities wander in looking a bit nervous clutching an assortment of pencil cases, sketchbooks and bags although as usual there is very few men. 
The aim of the course is to get across in about six hours an understanding of the process of Reduction Linocut. Easy right? yeah dead simple.


I tend to jump straight in as time is limited, discus the materials we are to use, how to use them and then dash round the group looking at the suitability/unsuitability of the reference. Can it be turned into a linocut. Then silence descends as everyone concentrates on drawing/tracing their image onto the lino and I catch my breath for the first time since the kids jumped on my head. Another quick talk on tool use and abuse, mainly how not to cut yourself, and then it's on to cutting the white away.


With so many people and so few time I am a bit bossy and dictate that everyone is using the same colours, which makes ten people inking up a lot easier. This is when the room comes alive. After the drawing and cutting and perhaps not quite understanding how the process works. When the first print is pulled back is always a bit of an Aha moment. The trainee printer always stands dead still holds the print up and just looks at it for a moment while it all sinks in, then usually they nod. Just a tiny bit, then carry on.

We print a second colour if we have time, which means sometimes it is straight to the black to provide a nice sense of contrast with the white. Well it would if the highly trained, professional artist had actually remembered to bring the black. Eeek everyone was far to polite to comment. A dark blue it is then.
By the second colour everyone has pretty much got an understanding of the process and is buzzing with excitement. As a jaded, bitter old (ish) printer this enthusiasm and enjoyment does genuinely rekindle the enormous pleasure taken in creating an image from this simple method. I do get genuinely excited and really impatient to see what the image will look like. Lurking by a students elbow, bending over to see the image first as they peel the paper back from the block. The magic moment when you first see the new, right way round, image. 

A great aspect of linocut is just how simple the actual technique is, teachable to anyone in a couple of hours. However the depth of sophistication and variety of expression capable within that same simple method (Carve block, ink on block, paper on block, pressure. Clean block, carve some more ...) is extraordinary.


A nice bunch of people produced a nice set of interesting linocuts and every one went home happy with the quietly bubbling contentment you only get creating a small piece of yourself in the form of a small piece of artwork. Lovely.