Studio Saturday - mornings in the studio

It's so enjoyable to sit in the studio every morning - with my back to the mess that must be tackled someday. The table by the window is mostly clear - but this week there were lots of shavings from the "Anni" woodblock

 Kinda like a great cloud tumbling over a tiny landscape...

One bit of fooling around involved cutting holes from magazines - I wanted circles that were part dark, part light -

 Nice big punch -

 Strange things appear through the holes -

 and the cut pages can be arranged "interestingly" -

 as can the circles

Not sure where this is going! Waiting to see where it might lead...

This is a collection of bits of blue tape removed from my cutting mat -

 and a rubbing taken. Again, just play.

The worktop was clear enough, thanks to a burst of clearing up and throwing out, for laying out some inky drawings that surfaced -

 "channeling Munakata and Carli Accardi". And using "chinese money".

Sometimes I spend rather too long looking at instagram, and sometimes an image calls out to me -

After awkwardly starting drawing in the little notebook, I found that if I "liked" doing it, it flowed. Looking harder made it look better. I'm quite pleased with the results -

Drawing summer school - day 5

The most important thought, for me, that came out of the "check in" session at the start of the day (or was it a pep talk?) was the idea of consequence - once the drawing is finished, is there another that needs to be made? I think this could be a way to link the empty page and its possibilities with the intensity and unthought thinking that has gone into previous work, while that spirit is still fresh. 

I also think that thinking is not the way make a drawing ... there just needs to be a starting point for the interaction of artist&brush to happen, for the ink to find its path around the page.

People settled down to follow their own plans

... and although I sort of knew what I'd be getting on with, I decided to review the work of the past four days.

These were may favourite pieces. I'd been looking at all the breath&ink drawings and saw one that I really liked - dark and gleaming and compact, just a little frilly edge. On reflection, it had qualities of modesty and intensity, humbleness and eagerness. I looked for an indication of who had made it - it was me! I was truly startled, and tucked my pleasure away to be examined later.

The line drawing with carbon paper, the inky painting, and the blind drawings also pleased me in various ways.

 All around, people were engrossed in what they were doing, and I was procrastinating.

To start, I want to finish - or finish with - the Uphill Struggle, to see whether the random tendrils could be tamed. No, it was a mess and always would be, something without valid intent or aesthetic outcome. I think I might cut it up and sew it back together, or tie the pieces into a bundle (as Susan Hiller does with some of her canvases) and seal it in some way, char the edges perhaps and then dip them in wax, or add so much paint that they become the sides of a brick. Or cut into very thin strips and weave them into a (waste)basket. Or cut into A4 and write very short letters to MPs on the back. But that's for later.

Finally, time to start on The New Thing. I'd got up early and started catching up on writing blog posts about the course, and when it came to writing about breathing&ink&blobs there appeared A Fully Formed Idea. It was a good moment.

I sorted out the components:
- to make compact but large blobs (no tendrils) drawn by the breath
- each on a separate page (the page to be the size of my hand)
- holes in the middle, for the book to breathe (where did I put that large punch)
- a concertina book (quick and easy format)

Before leaving home there was just enough time to choose a paper (not bright white; somewhat sturdy) and cut it to size - 10 strips with four pages each.

I mixed some washing-up liquid into ink, poured a little ink onto the paper, and started.

The first one

The entire sequence 

The last one

After feeling like the lame duck all week, I was surprised by my own work, by the way it could develop (under some pressure) in about two hours, from splodge to nuance as I dealt with the nuances of the technique. It ended up better than I could have imagined, and while I was doing it, all sorts of associations were rushing into my brain. I wrote them down. 

For "the exhibition" (two drawings each) I set out the final two strips. 

To end with, details from some of the work in the final display -

 

Quite a range of marks, of ideas behind it, of ties to their usual work.

Thanks to the Drawing Room for organising the course; to the tutors - Sarah Woodfine (Tuesday), Jane Sassienie (Wednesday), and Marcus Coates (Thursday); and to Tania Kovats (Monday and Friday) for leading us all through the undergrowth and out into the sunshine.

More marbling

Day 3 of the course at City Lit started with a bit of inspiration - one of the students works with leather and had tried marbling it -

First, testing the spread of each of the three inks so as to use the one with the least flow (smallest spread) first -

  Demos of different techniques for different patterns throughout the day...

French curl (aka snail and nightingale's nest) -

 Using combs - start with a feather pattern...

 ... then hold the comb steady as you draw it -

 Spanish moire is best on thinner paper - the idea is that you wobble the paper as you lay it down -

 Our set-up (working in threes) -

Lots of papers hanging to dry -

 ... and being dried with a hairdryer, so that we could take them home with us -

This, made by Royston and shown as a detail, is the one I would have liked to take home -

 Instead I have these, A3 sized -

 ... and some skimming strips ... little landscapes ...

... surprising and inspirational -

Marbling, day 1

The first day of a three-Saturday course at City Lit focused on suminagashi - "ink floating on water". Some historical examples on which poems have been written -

 ... and some bits that the tutor brought -

We were each given a book with a beautiful, delightful, inspirational, unique cover for our notes -

 My first attempts - the lines of ink aren't supposed to break up like that -

My handful of small samples when dry -

For larger and more delicate papers, a dowel is used to lift the paper out of the bath -

 Making ink -

 I wasn't getting the balance of wetting agent and ink right, so my results were, um, suboptimal ... but as the ink sank to the bottom of the tray, there were some nice ephemeral effects -

Skimming the remnants of ink from the surface in between prints didn't work terribly well, but fresh water and a bit of perseverance finally got a bit of a pattern -

I'll be trying this at home.