Woodblock prints: Whirling

 "Whirling" is based on some little stuffed figures I made years ago from the results of microwave dyeing of fabric, when the world of colour was new to me. They in turn are based on Korean costumes; fortunately I figured out how to give them "heads" -

Much drawing and colouring-in went on - I was trying to get a lot of colours by overlaying various basic colours -

... and much tracing and rubbing -

Finally some actual printing happened, but was not terribly successful - bad choice of colours!!

Some of the prints were mis-registered, and the (thin) board warped -

Lots of lessons learnt,  the main one being Keep It Simple! These prints were done before lockdown, and from this distance in time (three years?) I quite like the "minimal" ones and might try printing (or embossing?) the key block and adding just one or two colours -

Quick trip to South Kensington

 ...to see two things - the Fashioning Masculinities exhibition at the V&A, which is finishing on 6 November, and a 72-foot rocket that is temporarily outside the Science Museum.

Simple and elegant, 18th century

Amusing little film danced by men in underwear

In "Spitfire", "choreographer Sir Matthew Bourne OBE ... takes an affectionate look at male vanity and the world of men's underwear advertisements"

Also visible is Aitor Throup's translucent "Ensemble"

Conspicuous consumption of fine fabric in India

"The finer the muslin, the more fabric could be gathered in a 

jama's skirt and ruched in its sleeves"

West meets East in two dragon robes, one made into a jacket

The rocket tucks under the wing of a converted 747  (you can just about see it in the final photo). During air launch to orbit the plane points upward to get LauncherOne at the best angle, and when it's released the plane lurches. (I feel seasick just thinking about it.) It will be launched from the UK soon, from Spaceport Cornwall, Newquay. So far, LauncherOne has delivered cubesats to low earth orbit.

Woodblock prints: Construction Lines series 1

 A project in Spring term 2022, based on the compass and ruler lines that are used to start geometrical construction of patterns.

Working out the grids (and deciding which to use) -

Rubbings and printing -

At some point before cutting I randomly jettisoned some of the curved grid lines and felt much happier about how things were going - more open, more interesting, more accidental and surprising. A bit of experimentation with layout of cut star shapes and another block was ready to cut and print with sumi ink onto the watercolour backgrounds.

In fact the stars originated from a cutout grid; I debated whether to print the "net" or the stars and had to make a mockup to decide. On the print, you can see the altered grid of circles; on one side, almost all the lines are left, forming a sort of border, over which I sometimes printed diagonal lines -

"Warming up the board" on newsprint, and adding some leftover stars; just playing...

Three of the finished prints, the coloured stars cut out and glued on -

More finished prints ...

... and my favourites -

Olga de Amaral at Lisson Gallery

 Golden textiles, woven and painted (not dyed) -

How does she do it? Gesso and gold leaf are involved - this is the front of one piece -

... and this is the back -

Some of the work is massive - most of it is large -

Sometimes threads (linen) are woven around sticks -

Sometimes strips that have been woven are woven yet again -

Fascinating, intriguing, clever, beautiful. And how lovely to be among these works, that golden glow...

Olga de Amaral (b.1932) is a Colombian textile artist who, the gallery says, "spins base matter into fields of color and weaves tectonic lines through space, unselfconsciously testing the borders between crafted object and the work of art". She traveled widely in the 1950s and 60s, studying textiles at Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1952 and teaching at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in the 1960s. She represented Colombia at the 1986 Venice Biennale. She is married to an artist whose works appear incidentally in the two films that are shown.

The show runs till 29 October.

The King's Observatory

 A roof with a view - over the golf course that now surrounds it. Apparently not only the pagoda in Kew Gardens but also the Shard can be seen through gaps in the foliage of a nearby tree.

The stairs are narrow, but Queen Caroline in the wide skirts of the time came up them, along with 15 other people, to attempt to see the planet Venus cross the sun (which took about 8 hours and was being carefully observed all over the world).

Putting down the covers made more standing room -

... but it must have been quite crowded ...

The telescope isn't original, it's just there to give some sense of what the observatory was like -

Several lovely bits of old ironwork that opened the viewing aperture and turned the entire roof to position it -

And candlesticks for (faint) lighting, so as not to dim the view of the stars -

Not your usual dining room

 A chance to visit The King's Observatory in Richmond, built by George III in 1769 to observe the transit of Venus. Its current owner made his money in shipping in the Far East, and has put into his dining room a marvellous 18th century painting showing the foreigners' areas of Hong Kong. It's an enlarged reproduction that fits the room exactly, painted on silk by contemporary artists in Wuxi, and is full of detail -

The table looks at first glance to be octagonal, but is in fact nine-sided -

After the rain

 The rain just started when we were on the way to the tube after woodblock class, but had stopped when we emerged, so I took a longer route home (to get some of those 10K steps!) and encountered this lovely shrub in rather a decrepit garden on Fonthill Road -

Is it datura, or is that a vine?

After sunset the final few clouds were dispersing, so wispy, so smudged, and that tree in the distance is so sharp, etched into the moist air -

Lovely light

Combining geometry and woodblock

 My first attempts to combine geometry drawings with woodblock printing were small, about 10cm x 15cm. Rather than standing the design nice and square, I had it tipping off the page -

Same idea, slightly different, a bit more interesting - and printed with rather random inking (using watercolour, not ink) -

Further inking experiments -

and combining blocks...

Other designs, not the right scale -

Interwoven -

After these came a larger printI was aiming to do a reduction print of some sort -

Even so a second block was needed, with other elements -

It didn't look very promising - 

So I started stitching, adding stars  ...

The threads are woven within each star -

A third block and a chance to try some other colours, why not -

New possibilities -

Would you call these monoprints? They're not strictly an edition! -

You can just about see the stitching on some of them.  The bottom row contains prints from the single blocks.

This one was printed in three stages, but hasn't been stitched yet -

Something to get back to, one day; possibly soon. I'd like some closure on this idea. Much as I appreciate the hexagon, it's a bit too "Grandmother's Flower Garden" for my current liking.

First step is to get individual photos of them all, and to arrange them from Best Favourite to least. I am resisting the temptation to sew them together into some sort of paper quilt!

Those have been languishing since May. In June I started thinking about the construction lines for the geometry drawings, and how they make nets containing the eventual shapes ... but that's another story ...