Week eight

Starting to crochet up small squares of dyed yarn to create a sampler

Results of dyeing with Hypericum (St John’s Wort) – a good range of colour, much stronger on wool

Finished my stitched fabric collage - bit wonky but good to see what colours go together

A welcome injection of colour – cranberries in the dye pot

Printing my woodcut

February’s daily drawings complete… a month of line drawings with flowers starting to make an appearance towards the end

Felt like the start of Spring this week… mornings are still cold and frosty, but sunshine and blue skies during the day really lifted the spirits. Quite a bit of dyeing going on in the background - should be able to show the results next week… I’m hoping some of the vibrant pink from frozen cranberries left over from Christmas will remain after rinsing. I’ve enjoyed making more rubber stamps to experiment with pattern - I’m going to try to do at least one of these each month so I have a set of patterns by the end of the year. I finished stitching onto my collage of fabric offcuts - it’s pretty rough around the edges, but I quite like the mark making of the stitches, and it’s good to start working with some of the dyed materials and see how the colours work alongside each other. I’ve also started crocheting some small swatches of the dyed yarn (remembering to label them as I go!) so that I can eventually put together a sampler. I completed my month of daily line drawings… it was interesting to see more flowers appearing by the last week of February, so that should bring more inspiration for future months.

Week six

Playing around with homemade inks - thank goodness for the blue of the red cabbage to break all those browns up a bit!

Christmas bouquet dyeing experiments (1)

Christmas bouquet dyeing experiments (2)

Drawing and traced outline for a woodcut print

Starting to carve the woodcut print

White posca pen on tracing paper to record snow patterns from bitmapped photos taken last month

A work-in-progress kind of a week… I’m stitching on top of a small collage of naturally dyed fabric scraps (see top picture) whilst hibernating in the evenings. I’ve been playing with my homemade inks to see how the colours look alongside each other (bit of a crossover with my stitching trials). I’ve catalogued the results of (non-scientific) dye experiments with Christmas bouquets of flowers donated by a neighbour once they were past their best. There was more colour in them than I expected. I’ve been carving a woodcut - my first in years - based on a sketch I did whilst taking part in the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch at the end of last month… looking forward to doing some printmaking again. Finally, I used some photos I took in the brief snow we had in Bristol on 24 January as a basis for some white posca pen drawings onto tracing paper. I’m planning to make these into a small book (what else?)

Week two

Samples of homemade ink (some more successful than others)

Pattern play with a rubber stamp carved from an ink drawing of periwinkle leaves

Quick ink sketches of rare splashes of colour in the garden at the moment

Red cabbage dye experiments - purple fades to lovely blues and teals

A grey and dreary week here in the UK, but I’ve busied myself making new batches of colour – both for dyeing fabric, thread and yarn, and making ink. I’ve had a few false starts with the ink making – pans boiling dry, or the colour being too weak or crystallising, but I finally seem to be getting the hang of it. Fun to see them all together on a sample sheet… what felt like a lot of non-descript browns have more subtlety than I realised at first glance. I enjoyed making a pattern stamp based on one of my daily ink silhouette drawings, and I’d like to develop this further and start to print onto some of my dyed fabric. It’s been great having the garden as a focus for my artwork to create a welcome distraction from all the depressing headlines at the moment, and of course to make the most of staying at home.

Week one

Results of natural dye experiments with oak twigs

And with red onion skins - not quite the pinky purples I was expecting!

Natural dye made from a bunch of lilies (I particularly like the soft greens of the yarn)

A welcome splash of colour thanks to the pot of onion skins boiling away

Trying out different ways of making leaf impressions

In an attempt to post a bit more regularly on this blog, I am going to try to do a weekly round-up of what I’ve been up to in my virtual Garden Residency. It’s been a good start despite the grey and gloomy weather, and I’ve enjoyed having a definite focus to the hour I spend on this before work each day.

Patternmakers

Last month I spent a really brilliant day on a one-to-one online workshop run by Sarah Burns (@patternmakers on Instagram). We started with potato printing - shouldn’t every day should start with this? - and moved onto lino . So many useful tips for exploring the potential of a simple printing block and printing onto fabric. My brain was bursting with pattern possibilities by the end of the day. Many thanks to Sarah for a very inspiring day…
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The wonders of Alpha-set

Brief one: create a poster with a message and display it (this formed part of my window display for VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations in my street)

Brief two: create an elaborate letterform from the modular stamps

Brief three: use the set to create repeat patterns (work in progress)

Brief three: use the set to create repeat patterns (back in my comfort zone!)

Brief four: create something to send to another Alphaset artist as an exchange

An abstract concertina book of overprinted patterns

I started off including stitching but then realised that I preferred the simplicity of the punched dotted lines

The brief encouraged you to also use the Alpha-set for the packaging

Proof of postage!

Lockdown just got a whole lot more fun with the delivery of an Alpha-set from @will.mower ... it prints an absolute treat - lovely texture, and so many possibilities.

Will set a series of four briefs for those of us who’ve bought an Alpha-set, and my responses are shown above. A really fun way to kickstart using the set and amazing to see so many different responses posted on Instagram (#alpha-set and #alpha-set).

Spud U Like

Brilliant session at the Artist’s Book Club at UWE last week - learning about resistance publishing and trying our hands at potato printing. A lot of fun! Many thanks to Csilla Biro and Alyn Smith for organising this. . .

Polyprint patterns

In an attempt to do something vaguely creative each day inbetween being glued to my computer screen for work, I've found some instant gratification making repeat patterns with polyprint. Even quicker than rubber stamps (although not as long lasting). I quite like the rough and ready print quality you get from fast stamping.

Serious tiling

Working on a new range of wrapping paper using rubber stamped patterns. Bit of a learning curve working out the repeat tiling, but it's amazing to see what patterns can be made with some really simple carved stamps (and the help of Photoshop!)

A more neutral palette

A very enjoyable afternoon spent monoprinting with my gelli plate and collection of found objects (most picked up from pavements on my dog walks). Decided to keep my colour palette a little more neutral this time in an attempt to wean myself fluorescent paint colours. Printing onto old book pages (from a library discard) added to the pleasing build up of pattern and texture. Many of the prints need more layers, but some of the early trimmings escaped the bin and made it into my sketchbook as collages. 

Beetlemania

Recent collage experiments of collaging monoprints made with a gelli plate. I enjoyed picking the  colours and patterns to fill my outline beetles, and then drawing on details with a fine black pen. Although some of the vibrancy of the neon inks is lost when scanned or photographed, they've made a smart set of postcards. Available this weekend at the Bristol Artists' Book Event (BABE) at the Arnolfini. Come and say hello if you're in Bristol! 

Published Primitive Printmaking

Really chuffed to have some of my prints featured in Stephen Fowler’s wonderful new book ‘Rubber Stamping’. The found object and plasticine prints were created on Stephen’s Primitive Printmaking summer school course at UWE in 2014, and it’s very exciting to see them included in the book. I may be biased but I can highly recommend getting hold of a copy - it’s absolutely jam packed with unusual project ideas and inspiration for all kinds of low tech printmaking. As Stephen explained in an interview with Sarah Bodman in the latest issue of ‘Printmaking Today’: “(the book is) very much in the spirit of ‘60s and ‘70′s Batsford art books - to share an open recipe rather than say ‘you have to do it this way’. It’s about inspiring people with examples and letting them think how they will use the process; it’s a beginning of something rather than an end.”

Rubber stamping free-for-all

Spent a very enjoyable Saturday afternoon helping out at Stephen Fowler’s drop-in rubber stamp workshop at the Arnolfini in Bristol. It was busy all afternoon, and by 5 o’clock two huge paper-covered walls were decorated with an array of beautiful stamps. Really inspiring to see everyone’s work and the excitement it generated - the instant gratification of rubber stamps seems to appeal to all ages.

sketchbook collages

Using up every last offcut of roller printing

Gelli on the (printing) plate

After buying a Gelli plate a couple of years ago, I finally got around to finding some time to have a play with it. The warm weather meant that acrylic paints were drying too quickly, so I used my Caligo relief inks with extender instead. Results were mixed - knowing when to stop seems to be the key… one layer too many and the whole print is ruined. As with everything in life, the prints were improved with a dash of fluorescent pink ink on the final layer. Trimming down the prints, I was left with a pile of colourful strips. Turns out these are excellent collage material (and I prefer them to the actual prints). So I now have a stash of colourful papers - some will definitely benefit from some rubber stamped additions. As long as I know when to stop...

Feathered friend

Cheeky wee Scottish Oystercatcher from my holiday sketchbook to round off the working week.

Starstruck by association

Very excited to learn that Margaret Atwood has tweeted about ‘Serena Joy’ the collaborative World Book Night rubber stamp project, inspired by her book ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’. A copy of the box of prints is now winging its way to her courtesy of Sarah Bodman. Many thanks to fellow stamper Linda Williams for writing to Margaret to let her know about the project. Have also just heard that Tate Britain will be accepting a copy of ‘Serena Joy’ as a donation to their artists' books collection. Great to hear of ripples from a project long after you think it’s completed...

Holiday

Back south of the border again after a wonderful fortnight up in the Scottish Highlands. Hills, lochs, big skies and lots of long walks. Just the ticket.

Rockets, robots and rubber stamps

A brilliant day yesterday teaching a rubber stamp workshop for MA Printmaking students at UWE. The theme was rockets and robots… chosen as an excuse to use the lovely stash of metallic stamp pads acquired by the university earlier in the year. It was also a good subject for looking at building up an illustration out of component parts. Really impressed with the quality and variety of the finished stamps, and thanks to some hard graft and teamwork, we ended up with an edition of seven stamped concertina books. Many thanks to Liz, Sophie, Linda, Rozzie and Vicky for a mighty fine end result.

Rockets and Robots

Preparing for a rubber stamp workshop I’ll be running for MA Printmaking students at UWE next week. Space age stamping - it’s a whole new frontier, with metallic inks and everything!