I spent the weekend on a two day linocut workshop at the Ardington School of Craft near Wantage. It was run by Laura Boswell, who is a wonderful artist and, as it proved, an equally wonderful tutor. She is a dedicated printer, specialising in linocut and Japanese woodblock printing.
I did a print of a bird of paradise first. This is a reduction process, so you cut away the block for each colour, ending up with a fixed number of prints and often a totally useless block. In this case, the final block was still quite a good outline of the bird (see the header image) which I might be able to reuse.
The second image was meant to be a Dorset seascape, but was rushed. I liked the colours, but the drawing was terrible.
I like making them more than using them at the moment. This one incorporates ideas from the first two. The covering paper is some wonderful wrapping paper from the Bodelian library. Linings are two lino cut prints I had lying around. There is now room for a pen. It is bound with proper book tape from the wonderful Vintage Paper Company in Orkney. Where you can also get unsold watercolour paper made in the early 20th century.
I have promoted my new girl to a full crew member on the Daisy Grace. Relaxing the two girls in the sea, which was an awful picture in retrospect and is heading for the bonfire.
I enjoyed making my Ed Mostly concertina sketchbook so much that I’ve made another one, even though I haven’t drawn a line in the first one yet. This has a number of differences. A little smaller, so it can fit into a pocket more easily. The covers a wider than the pages, so there is room to fit a pen inside the closed sketch book, something I have always wanted. But most radically, two different types of paper, smooth watercolour and grey, textured pastel. I thought of just sticking one onto the end of the other, but instead, stuck them both to the middle cover, so one opens out one way, and one the other. Not sure how it will work in practice, but I’ll soon find out.
I’ve started working on repairing my poor headless girl. I knew drastic measures were needed, or I would simply redraw all of the errors. So I copied some of Degas’ techniques, on the basis that no one has ever done pastels better than him. I traced the photograph of the girls head off my tablet, and then transferred this to the painting with a yellow transfer paper (yes, Degas used photographs and tracings. Many of his best pictures are actually on teaching paper, with masses of fixative spray on them to keep everything in place. If it’s good enough for him, it’s more than good enough for me.)
This resulted in a much smaller head than I had originally drawn. You can still see a shadow of that above her. Now I am working pastel over it. It needs to be fixed, not so much to protect it as to give a tooth for the pastel to grip on. She isn’t finished, but it’s not far off. I want her to look much more abstract than I drew before. Nearly there at last.
I finished this lady some weeks ago, and liked her very much, but I was never happy with her head. It’s too big overall and her facial features are just too heavy and masculine.
I tried various alterations but never satisfactory. Hard to match the pastel finish in any case. So I went back to basics, and painted out her face with gesso, to start all over again.
That gave a good drawing surface, but that doesn’t guarantee a good drawing. Try as l might, the face still eludes me.
So extreme measures called for. I’ve finally decapitated the poor girl and will try all over again. Not sure how it will work. I was tempted to paint a brown paper bag over her head, but that seems a shame. Maybe a Modigliani mask? We shall see.
I was reading through Ed Mostly’s excellent blog on sketching and sketching paraphernalia “Mostly Drawing” and came across these ideas for a concertina sketchbook. It’s different in that it has three hard covers, which gives you support which is lacking in all other concertina books I’ve tried.
Then I thought that I could make one of those, so I did. It took less than an hour, and most of that time was spent waiting for glue to dry.
I’m very pleased with the outcome, and I’ve decorated it with some of the calligraphic works I produced a few weeks ago, which have been lying around. So thank you very much Ed. Just need to draw in it now…
Spent a very pleasant day on an urban sketching workshop, lead by Mark Kelland and run by New Brewery Arts in Cirencester. Lovely hot day to be sitting around town trying to sketch different places. I hope that I carry on and do more now that I have started again after a long pause.
JEGS ART 