Cirencester market place

On a beautiful, cold afternoon. 

Portrait of an artist

I can’t remember who this is, but I think she is a print artist. The photo came up in a search fit lino cut images and I liked it. She had flame red hair, which doesn’t show in monochrome. At least, not by any technique that I know of. 

Letters, words and paper

I spent a fascinating day at the Ardington School of Craft experimenting with textual art, tutored by  Simon Sonsino. Splashing inks about and then trying to incorporate lettering /words into the result. As one whose writing is illegible even to me, this was going to be a challenge, but great fun. At one stage it involved frisbeeing inked papers around the garden to get spin patterns.

Watercolour; an old shed in the garden

This week’s class was about drawing and painting. We spent nearly two hours using fine line pens to build up a dense, textured drawing of a garden with an old shed in it, and then half an hour sloshing watercolour over it. It needed longer than that as the paint really needed to dry in stages. 

Although I quite liked the result, I think it probably looked better when it was just a drawing… 

Life class watercolour sketches

Ink and watercolour this week. The planned model cancelled and our usual stand-in saved the day. He is an excellent model, can really hold a pose indefinitely, but it wold be nice to have a female model again. They seem now to be the exception rather than the rule.

This is not so much ink and wash as ink and watercolour dabs. Mark doesn’t want even washes, but lively variation of colour. He aso insists on just the three primary colours, red, yellow and blue. All the rest arise from them

Another blast from the distant past.

In the very early 1970s I created a series of small scraper board images, using a set I purloined from my mother. Black Indian ink laid over a white waxy base. You scraped through with a little knife to create a white image. I loved the effect and it was easy to correct with black ink. The viking ship was the first one I did. All the rest are vaguely Tolkienesque, apart from the Blake poem, which was on white scraper board.

My sister has one other that I did, of a king either gazing into a crystal ball, or just about to bowl for a strike. It’s all a matter of viewpoint.

Watercolour, ink and wax

First class of the year. As always with Mark Kelland’s class, we learn new techniques. The problem is applying them out of the class. Today we looked at using candle wax as a resist. Laying on bright yellow with a sponge, scribbling over it with an uncoloured candle, then laying more, darker paint over. Then drawing apples with the candle and finally sponging ordinary Parker Quink over it all, It gives an effect very like lino cut printing. You would hardly guess it is watercolour. I added a few highlights by scratching through to the paper underneath.

At the end of this term, Mark wants one picture from each of us to put in an exhibition. It will cover all of his classes, not just this one.