Woman's head

 I guess this is another "study". There are a couple of larger things I'm edging towards, but I need to get some of these postcard-sized prints done to work some things out and to get my hand back in practice after what seems like an interminable "break" doing DIY and stuff. I need to know what my hands can achieve after several months of punishment.

I found a very simple drawing in an old sketch book that served as the basis for this. I've no idea of what/who I was drawing here, but I liked the shape of it. I did think I might call it "M". She looks like an "M" to me...

Study for something larger

 I've got an idea for a larger piece that just needed something... like a naked woman on a skateboard. So I thought I'd have a little postcard sized try out. A couple of wee tweaks and I think I've got what I wanted. All I have to do now is work out the rest.

Black Sun, Cemex

 This print has been a long time coming. I've been stuggling with it for months. It ended up that there was one corner that I liked. So I decided to cut the rest away and go with a print half the size. Anyway now it can be the third Cemex print, and I'm happy to chatge money for it. It was going to be much more complicated with multiple blocks, which is why the sun is the "wrong" colour. But when I decided the Sun was black, everything fell into place. Do you remember staring at the sun when you were a kid? Even when you were told not to. The world turned colour then, didn't it?

Brown paper bags

 Packaging has always presented a problem. I've tried varius things, wrapping paper, random commercial bags... So I decided to make my own bags that would take the larger mounted prints I sell. And of course, the smaller sized ones. I used brown wrapping paper. So its essentially doing the wrapping work up fromt.

I can't remember if I posted about the design way back, but I tried printing on fabric bags back in 2020, but I wasn't too happy with how they turned out. So I reused the text from those to print here. It's desiigned to take any postcard (portrait format) so I used tthe "Handprinted" postcard here.

Rugby Artists and Makers exhibition - Five Senses

Hanging this exhibition today. Goes live tomorrow 21st January and closes 1st February. The title was plucked out of the air at a meeting in November, I think. I decided to run with it and arrived at the print Sensing.

Here's the flipbook catalogue:

Sensing

This print brings together a number of ideas that arose while I was working on other projects. Some I have already used; others I just slipped into my pocket with my car keys. They all came tumbling out when someone suggested Five Senses for the name of the upcoming Rugby Artists and Makers exhibition. So here they are brought together in a sensual game of consequences.

So many artists and ideas came into play here. Touch comes from Harold Speed’s book, The Practice and Science of Drawing – the notion that outline comes from the act of touching – it’s an idea I’ve wanted to draw for some time, and it sneaks in here. The hearing woman is based on a figure from an old life drawing by an unknown artist. The whispering man and the seeing woman started out as the couple in Nolde’s Mann und junges Madchen. The sensuous pomegranate eater has been in my pocket since I did the Song of Solomon prints, and if I ever do a full set of those he will reappear. The model for the pomegranate eater is by the way a small classical bust of Hermes I keep for these purposes. The woman smelling the flower is of course Anna Bloom, pretty much directly lifted from my Rote Blume print. Finally the pregnant belly with the eye comes from Shiko Munakata. The navel eye appears frequently in his work; I’m guessing it’s Bhuddist, but For me it feeds sufficiently into that Room for a Life thing and maybe that Gut Feeling thing to place the viewer in a slightly uncomfortable place.

Finally, I recently bought a print by Maria Beine-Hager of a puppeteer and puppets that was done as simple line work in white on black. So provided the overall feel of what I wanted to do. As I was working on this I was reminded of an article by Eric Gill in the Woodcut Annual for 1927. He suggested that it was relatively simple to make intaglio prints from small wood engraving blocks. I am minded to try making intaglio prints from this block. If it works out I will no doubt post again.

Christmas Card

 This year's card has more... joyful silliness about it. A combination of the moose and my mother-in-law's anaglypta wallpaper. The previous five had more of a feel of hoping for future brightness about them. This one just seems happier, despite mooses being so lugubrious. Maybe I can see a kind of light in the distance now, maybe the tide has turned. Maybe.