"Solstice" woodblock prints

Ready to cut -

 Trial by rubbing, thinking about colours -

It was at this point that I realised that what I was seeing was how I wanted it to print, really - which would mean cutting the block in reverse. Duh!

Start again, on the backs -

There's a technique called white-line printing, in which the areas are inked up separately. I came across it while chain-watching youtube videos, but can't remember which video showed it. That artist had done a big print, one colour at a time, with the paper clamped to the table or pinned to the block to maintain the registration for subsequent colours. My block was quite small (20x8cm) and my methods, such as they are, are more slap-dash, ... well, let's see what happened ...

The first print (bottom) was a reminder about using enough colour

With a total of four blocks, in various combinations, and three colours, and the single shape (the arc) I set out to make six prints, aiming to put them in pairs for eventual "books" -

Spot the difference! One pairing ....

... and another

The third pair, and the blocks

The colours are quite pale because my old tubes of watercolour had dried up and drastic measures had to be taken to be able to use the contents - rather too much water was used - but this allows the wood grain to come through, and I like that subtlety -

The "books" that I'm aiming to make are simple diptychs - here's one I prepared earlier -

A sample of the format (concept becomes reality)

Its cover doesn't relate to, or harmonise with, the contents; it was just a bit of painted cartridge paper that was the right size (and rather nice) -

So many possibilities ... so many decisions...

The idea of the books needs to incubate some more in my subconscious. There are so many possibilities within this simple format - cover weight and design, binding stitch, inner endpapers, inclusion of text (or not), weight of printing paper, colophon (or not), wrapper? - oh yes, and the actual images that are printed - and the colours throughout. 

With all these decisions ahead, a thought-through, finished book is a long way off. (But what fun to move towards it!) I know what, or how, it will be, but don't yet know what it will look like.

Poetry Thursday - a knitting poem by Emily Dickinson

Just as I was thinking it strange that no poem has "accidentally" come to my notice during the entire week, a Christmas card arrived - thank you Jane! -

The image is called Knit One, Purl One and it's by Jan Brewerton, from Ten Poems about Knitting, published by Candlestick Press. In fact it's the cover of the pamphlet, and the ten poems are:

‘Untitled’, Emily Dickinson‘Dropped Stitches’, Jane Duran‘Janet’s’, Sue Dymoke‘Neighbours We’ll Not Part Tonight’, Roy Fisher‘The Manly Art of Knitting’, Christopher James‘The Knitter’, Jackie Kay‘The Symbolism of Ancient Sweaters’, Gwyneth Lewis‘For My Grandmother Knitting’, Liz Lochhead‘Needle Work’, Allison McVety‘The Knitting Song’, Jessie Pope‘Wool’, Lydia Towsey

Perhaps the Emily Dickinson poem is this one -

Autumn—overlooked my Knitting

Autumn—overlooked my Knitting—
Dyes—said He—have I—
Could disparage a Flamingo—
Show Me them—said I—

Cochineal—I chose—for deeming
It resemble Thee—
And the little Border—Dusker—
For resembling Me—

The card also contains mention of a charity called Knit for Peace: www.knitforpeace.org.uk, which matches knitters with good causes. "Send us your knitting and leftover yarn" they say, "and we'll find it a good home." 

Do you remember the giant knitted poem, made to mark the centenary of the Poetry Society in 2009?
Each square a letter, over a thousand were needed - and the final work measured 13 metres by 8 metres.

(via)

The poem chosen (and kept secret till the unveiling) was Dylan Thomas's In My Craft and Sullen Art.

Woodblock Wednesday

Next term's woodblock course starts on 17 January and till then I'm trying to use Weds mornings for it. Today I was looking forward to cutting and printing "something simple" - perhaps overlapping squares, what could be more simple than that? - so as to experiment with layering colour.

But ... having sent off some Winter Solstice greetings, I got deflected into the simple shapes of the curved earth and the curved sun, and when it came to arranging them on the blocks there seemed to be a dazzling array of possibilities. So I played around some more, hoping that manually handling the shapes would help resolve the confusion. (Though a little inner voice keeps saying, "just do it, it's no big deal, you can improve it next time!" Go away, tedious little inner voice - I want to be satisfied with the outcome!)

It's true what they say: when you can't decide what to do, just start. The plate was to hand, so I used it to draw an arc, and then the next one, overlapping; and then related that to the bits of wood on hand, and then redrew it the actual size of the wood, and that started the thinking about how much overlap there might be, and does the image need flipping ... so out came the origami paper and some arcs were cut from that (much easier to play around with composition) -

 Seeing the two blocks, I leapt ahead to "this could be a folded book with the shapes moving past each other as it goes on" ... which led to other decisions about composition, relative sizes, sequence....

 What sort of curve is the "sun"s trajectory... does it completely disappear ...

 Er, wait a minute - this is supposed to be about overlapping colours, let's get back to that idea, save the book for another time.[Could it be a tunnel book ...? how would that work with the size of the shapes? ....]

Now, which way round should it print? (Keep It Simple, says the little inner voice, then decisively shuts the window.)

Something to let the subsconscious resolve, when it goes walking with me. On return, cutting will happen, aiming to print tomorrow...

A positive result of the morning's dithering is the finding some papers that will be useful for another project, which has a fast-approaching deadline -

Drawing Tuesday - Natural History Museum

We've been rather avoiding the Natural History Museum, wonderful though the collection is, because it's very busy, especially with schoolchildren. So we went in the afternoon, and it was really quite bearable - only thing is, next time, remember to bring your own sketching stool!

I found a bench opposite a Pliosaur fossil, about 180 million years old -

and took out a nice thick felt pen but couldn't "risk" using it in the sketchbook, how daft is that!

So many bones!

Eventually another version appeared in the sketchbook, with a smaller one trying to get the proportions and angles right. As we keep finding, it's hard to fit the big things onto the page -

We were meeting in the "old minerals gallery", with its wonderful columns and cases -

 so I tackled a decorative bit of foliage -

Rather a lame attempt, "must try harder"!

The others had been busy elsewhere -

Carol with a skeleton...

Janet B with an elephant skull ...

Janet K with a great view of the whale in the entrance hall

Joyce with tourmaline ...

Michelle with a collection of very individual skulls

 Extra-curricular activities 

Michelle's book, incorporating her monoprints

... and some of her recent screen prints, postcard size

Joyce's observations of tree cutting near her home

Carol's felted Christmas ornament

Janet K's  fruitful use of time while waiting at Montreal train station, capturing
a section of a mural she'd often admired

Janet B's encounter with a collection of knitted swifts
at Walthamstow Wetlands

As we left the building, it was quite dark, and the trees around the museum's seasonal ice rink were dazzling...

10 years ago

At the end of November, 2007, I posted about the monoprinting course that Tony and I attended at City Lit. It was his first adult-ed course, despite my continual recommendations, and after that ice-breaker he went on to do many more - digital photography, video editing, bookbinding. And we even went to a dance "taster" together, but somehow didn't follow up on that...

Some of these monoprinted fabrics have reappeared over the years, and others are still lurking, waiting to be rediscovered.

Monoprinting

City Lit had a two-Sunday workshop on monoprinting, led by Sharon Finmark. What fun to be in the print room with the presses and drying racks:
Working away with our palettes and plates and brayers:
On the second day, most people were using colour:Tony used leaves picked up in the street as a resist:The brayer leaves marks of varying weight:I used black ink both days - and came up with a lot of "rain" prints, on paper:and on fabric:In the week between sessions, I stitched a little piece to be used for printing, first with ordinary thread and then with thread almost too thick to fit through the needleand found the back went all loopyBoth sides were useful for printing - especially on tissue paper.The oil in the ink will eventually rot fabric, but I printed some fabric anyway -Overall, these are my favourites -

Gloomy Sunday in or near Knightsbridge

A walk through Green Park and Hyde Park to the V&A.

The Serpentine

Go easy on the eyeliner, fellahs

Rose Wiley at Serpentine Sackler gallery

(click photo to enlarge)

Canvases patched, spliced, layered

In 1928 the V&A was given a collection of 16th century stained glass, mainly from the workshop of Gerhard Remisch, from Steinfeld and Mariawald Abbey, which was closed in 1802. Says the V&A: "In the nineteenth century, after the 1798 French Revolution and during the Napoleonic Wars that followed, huge quantities of stained glass were removed from churches and monasteries in France and Germany. England became the primary market for this glass. John Christopher Hampp (1750-1825), a German cloth merchant who had settled in Norwich in 1782, and his partner William Stevenson were responsible for bringing to England much of the continental glass now to be found throughout the country. Much of this continental glass was used in churches to replace the glass destroyed during the sixteenth-century Reformation. Quantities of it were also set in the windows of private residences and chapels of the newly rich industrialists and by the mid-nineteenth century there was a well-established tradition of stained glass collecting in England. "

On the right, beyond the blue reflections, is St Simeon in the temple beholding the holy spirit - the dove was a sign that he would see Christ before he died -

 Looking more closely, and having just puzzled over Rose Wylie's paintings, I found these panels puzzling in a different way ... that man with the staff, for instance, what's he doing there ... and why does the statue of Moses(?) have horns ...

 Both panels are filled with a concatenation of fantastic architecture -

 ... and just look at the shapes of the glass, some of them very tiny ...

As I headed for the tube, the 12,000 light bulbs of Harrods tried valiantly to cut through the late-afternoon greyness -