School work 1st entry

School work so far:

Well going back to school having been working on an art course at home has proved really quite a contrast, notably in the pace and the amount of work getting done.  Having not been in formal education for a very long time, and to have waited for this chance for an equally long time, I was expecting a faster paced, more demanding and perhaps old fashioned idea of art school with rigorous drawing sessions, painting and sculpting from life.

What we did do though, having been given the theme 'Urban habitat' was a series of workshops as a means of introduction to various mediums.  The most useful sessions to me were the print ones.  Partly as I had no experience of print other than mucky kid hand prints on the wallpaper at home, and also because I can now see a potential for its application in my work by way of lots of experimentation.  I think we have only just touched on the subject with some straight forward processes, but the subject seems a lot bigger than I expected with many more techniques and processes to discover.

First quick collograph print, by means of cutting into shellac-coated card with a scalpel:

Simple card collograph print

Here I discovered that a plate that has been previously inked appears to have more ink on than it actually does.  The first print was quite pale, and the second paler.  (Mental note to self made for future prints).

Again, a collograph print cut into card, which was done with the idea of also using a second plate with carborundum:

Collograph with carborundum print

This street scene at night which is very 'urban habitat'  was worked from a photo I took and seemed to lend itself to the dark tones I had seen in carborundum prints shown to us.  I was pleased to see that I was able to graduate the carborundum (which was mixed with PVA), by brushing it from the thickly painted area towards the light to try to create the atmospheric light I was hoping to achieve.  (I want to use atmospheric light in much of my work and love tonal contrasts.  I looked at Hopper's etchings and he uses the same sense of light that he does in his paintings).

(Made mental note to self after to remember image is reversed!).  This was an improved outcome, not perfect of course and somehow, even though I hadn't put any detail there, the car appeared to have acquired a wheel trim.  It's more usual for them to disappear in Bristol!  (I now had an idea of how much ink to leave on the plate too).  Wanting to try out as many techniques as I could I printed this again with a chine colle sky of purple tissue paper.

Chine colle tissue paper sky added to collograph with carborundum print

I like the idea that an even block of colour can be added so easily, even if it looks like the aftermath of a chemical attack.

I was itching to try an etching!

My idea for my etching was inspired by the

kitchen drainer.  (I'm a kitchen sink artist).

 quick sketch idea

The cups and dishes etc waiting for me to put them away appeared to me very like an urban landscape, so using kitchen implements, I set one up and photographed it.  

 This image I then etched onto my prepared hard ground on copper plate.

Etching

 I was more pleased with this print and loved the process of etching.  I'm sure I will do more etching as I do like detailed drawings in line.  I had brought in some coloured cellophane as I loved the look of the transparent colours so did the print again combining this layer of it.

Etching with yellow cellophane

Unless I was mistaken, I had cut it to the exact size but it appeared to have shrunk.


Whilst looking at etchings I discovered the beautiful delicate etchings of Morandi.

Linking in with the kitchen utensils I also looked at Graham Crowley's everyday household objects depicted in both a humorous and slightly sinister way.  I love these as I like the idea of looking at things from a slightly different angle,  I think this is something that I tend to do and want to incorporate in my own work.  Also I noticed he did some landscapes using uniform block colour which I likened to my yellow cellophane urban landscape.

Graham Crowley

Graham Crowley

Quite timely was an exhibition of artist's prints at the Victoria Art Gallery in Bath.  I went along and had a look at these works by Matisse, Picasso, Dali and Warhol.  The descriptions included the methods used and they were very much their experimentations with print.  If I'm honest I didn't find them wildly exciting but found Dali prints the most interesting in that they were more detailed.


The recent embossing session tied in with where my thoughts had been going.  Having been thinking about the figure and its relation to space a lot, I was thinking of ways of indicating space around the figure rather than the figure itself.  This led to ideas of disrupted lines and contour lines.

I'd played with the image of a figure, including breaking it down into shapes of tone.  I used these shapes of tone in my embossing by cutting them out from a piece of card with the resulting embossing being an image that appeared to focus on the space with just the highlighted areas of the figure showing embossed, which to me, achieved an appearance of the figure piercing through that space, or semi merged with it.

Embossed image, although a bit difficult to photograph effectively

Thinking in terms of a less solid figure still and lines to indicate it I was playing with scribble to indicate tone that could then be transposed into either wire or glue to create an embossed image.

The hot glue was too thick though and even fine wire proved to thick to be able to go through the etching press.  Instead I created a simplified image to enable myself to try a wire embossing.

Wire embossing although a bit difficult to photograph clearly