Old china

All this sitting about being on holiday is getting me a little bored so I'm going to get my teeth into my "homework" this coming week. We're continuing the Cockney Rhyming theme but I'm going to go off on a bit of a tangent which will allow me to draw pottery (I know, any excuse..). 

You see the genius lies in the expression "Me old china" meaning of course "My old china plate" = "Mate". So today we went to Emmaus, which I love, and I took lots of pictures of pottery to work from and give me ideas for china patterns. I will post how I get on with this, my plan is to make screen-prints and maybe emboss bits of them to add texture but we shall see...In the meantime I've just rediscovered watercolour and am LOVING using it! Oh yeah and I've been drawing old men in pubs too... it's been an interesting week.

Pages printed!

These are my "journey" book pages which I'll be binding over the weekend. They were all printed with lino and oil-based inks in the albion press.  The images were made for a Print and Process project based on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. You would never know it, but they said to just run with whatever line took your fancy. i chose part of a line that said "Even if I were to walk from here to India..." so started thinking about a journey on foot.

I'm pretty happy with them as a set. Using small lino blocks like hand stamps, the suns, arrows and houses break up the flow of the book and make it a bit more playful. It's taken me ages to do and is only just dry but I feel like a weight has been lifted now it's all done! I'll be binding them in a hardback cover which will be covered in a white oilcloth with maybe a grey leather spine. I'm still a bit undecided on that so any ideas...?

Finished kit

Ta da! Here is my finished kit to make a paper ball as pictured in my previous post. It was a really interesting crit today seeing what other "batches of five" people had come up with for under a tenner. Someone had made pants with Noel Fielding (from the Mighty Boosh)'s face on!!! My idea seemed quite nerdy in comparison but hey ho, I'm chuffed with how they look!

Update - You can now buy one here!!

Batch of five

This is the paper ball that you'd be able to make from one of the kits I'm working on for this "Batch of Five" project. We first saw structures like this at the Science Museum and thought they were really cool (especially as they appeared in the "History of Computing" section). Recreating them has taken me days - I know, they are more complicated than they look - but I'm really pleased with the result. Will show you a pic of the finished kit when it's done...

Double whammy

Firstly, a sample print from my book about a journey. I'm quite chuffed with it and think it could look lovely in other colours. It still needs its little coloured houses but I quite like the abstracty look at the moment.

Secondly one of my collages was featured in a lovely treasury by Sarah and Jon of  Pocketstudio which is exciting. The other work featured is gorgeous I feel mine looks quite out of place! 

Anyway, time to go and do research, I have to think of a "batch of five" identical things I can produce, buy or compile that could potentially be mass-made, by Tuesday...erk.

Any ideas more than welcome!

Afternoon

I have to get some final printing started at least for this book project we're doing. So, this will be me for the next 3 hours on the awesome albion presses at uni. They are just so nice to use I can't describe..

Finished!

Phew! I'm having a break from my essay and just wanted to show off the linocut I finished this morning in front of Bargain Hunt. My fingers ache but I'm pretty pleased, I just hope to God it prints OK. I'll be printing it in a really pale grey as an icy background to some little coloured wooden houses for my landscape print project. I've got allsorts of lovely mountainous scenes planned but only two weeks to cut, print and bind them into a book... erk. It's fine, it's not as if I have an essay to write, another brief to start and finish and picture framing to do by Dec 11th or anything...

Oh yeah, in case you wondered it's not proper lino, it a vinyl tile from b+q as you get six 12" sq tiles for £3 as opposed to a 6x8" piece of proper lino for about the same. The tiles are easier to cut through, though that can be a mixed blessing as you can see where there are holes right through to the backing paper! But because it's so cheap I just stick another layer on the back once I'm done to give it strength. Seems to work OK. I was thinking of printing it up in colour at some stage too, I think turquoise or golden yellow would be just dreamy!

Cockney innit.

Our first proper brief where we have to come up with images from our imaginations was set a week and a half ago on the theme of Cockney rhyming slang, it's pretty fun but quite tricky incorporating the idea of the phrase and the meaning into one image. 

I was quite pleased with this little chap, especially because of the moustache! It was also quite fun researching suits, I'd love to learn how to cut patterns and make jackets and stuff, if only there were time... 

Crapness and goodness

OK, I'm officially crap at blogging, it's been weeks! 

Nevermind, I've got work coming out of my ears at the moment with uni. I'm writing an essay on 18th century Anglo-American artists, have a 6-week print project based on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and another project illustrating cockney rhyming slang! It's all fun though, if a little exhausting! The image above was my best attempt at lino cutting (which I've now chosen to specialise in for the Chaucer task) and I rather like it. 

If it weren't for the length of time those bloody oil-based inks take to dry I'd be bashing these out for Christmas cards but I fear they wouldn't be dry in time! I'm really looking forward to getting my print project started as I pretty much get to make images of whatever I want so long as I base them loosely around one line of the middle English text. The line I've chosen is "Even if I were to walk from here to India...", so I can muck about with the idea of a journey...

I cannot freaking wait to get my teeth into it!

Recent goings on

Hallo, it's been ages since I last posted! The first month of uni has been great, I've been so busy drawing I feel busier than I was when I was working full-time (and being paid for it!), but I suppose that's good. I'd hate to feel like I was kicking my heels on a course. We've had inductions on how to screen print and how to do etchings (telephone above is my attempt at this) and have been out and about drawing at museums, in the market and at the botanical gardens. All is going well I think, my drawing is changing lots already..

Next weekend I'm doing a handmade and vintage fair in Cambridge which is being held at this cool new art space which holds talks and meetings and classes on how to knit and stuff. This is the first sale and sounds pretty exciting. It'll be the day after my birthday too so as long as I can survive a potential nightmare hangover it'll be fiiiiiine...

Knitting and new stuff

So with the help of youtube I think I have grasped the basics of knitting! Silly really that I've not done it before but I must say I'm finding it most relaxing already.
My course is going well, I'm being set allsorts of briefs and being told we should be working 40-hour weeks....I've never heard of an undergraduate course being this intense! They're probably just getting us to get into good practice of actually getting out of bed each morning but still...

So far my favourite part of the course is called Print and Process and we're having to get lots of observational drawings together over the next 2 weeks that we'll turn into different kinds of prints (Monoprints, Etchings, Reliefs and Screen prints). Each process requires a different kind of starting image but I'm loving the simple colours needed for the screen printing induction we'll do. Eeee! I'm excited! And it's sunny! :) :)

Drawing stuff

So to get me in the groove of doing observational drawing again in readiness for my course, I've been drawing random things around the house. This is the payphone in our living room. I've never even used it but it's quite a cool shape, and was tricky to draw with all the angles and stuff. It's not the best drawing ever so I spruced it up a bit on Photoshop with some pretty colours...