Risk

 I was going to print this as a demonstration with the rolling-pin press but that fell through, so the block has been lurking in my bag for a few days. I woke up about 2am and couldn't gett back to sleep, so I got up at 4.30 and decided to run off a couple of proofs to see what it looks like. I think I need to trim a bit off the bottom line of the ankle, but apart from that I'm happy with how it's turned out. The picture is based on the drawing I did for day 31 of Inktober. The prompt was Risk and I think I'll keep that name.

The original drawing is a very light and airy line drawing, but I felt the print called for it to be night time. Doing feet had brought to mind something Tal R said about drawing people, the difficulties of drawing "nose, eyes ... and feets." I added the moon partly to reference something he said in one of the Louisiana Channel interviews, "The moon sees a lot." The moon certainly has a better idea of what is going on here. Better than me, anyway.

Comfortable Man

 

This started as a drawing I did a week or so in a class run by Eric Gaskell. Then I got persuaded to demonstrate printing at the Rugby Artists and Makers Pop-Up shop in Rugby Central, so I decided to work the drawing up into something I could do to amuse the crowds (sic). 

I decided to use craft foam and my rolling-pin press to double-down on the you-can-do-this-at-home thing. It also seemed an opportunity to show the old artist’s trick of emphasizing something light by placing it against a dark background and vice versa. Using craft foam also made it easy to do the “negative” version just by flipping over the bits I cut out of the other half. 

I like the 2-Tone thing that seems to be going on. It’s like “Whatever happened to the Rude Boys.”

Godiva of Coventry

 

I imagine this as a companion to the Guy of Warwick print. Both characters are engaged in risky acts of heroism, Guy risking life and limb and Godiva risking her reputation. I’m always thinking as I draw and compose and cut these things, telling myself stories about what I’m doing. Putting myself in the heads of the people I’m working on. The larger and more elaborate the composition, the more I’m thinking and explaining things to myself. 

Here are some of the things that went through my mind that impacted on the over all design. 

I wanted an elevated viewpoint, partly to help compositionally and partly representing a Peeping Tom’s eye view. That viewpoint also helped me add other people, so it was not just Godiva and the horse. 

Nuns seemed right to me, but they had to be blindfolded. I imagined Leofric (like all governments) tied in knots by his own edicts. So yes, nuns could lead the horse, but they couldn’t be allowed to see. Luckily Dobbin is the milkman’s horse, so knows the way. I also wanted the nuns to show their character in how they go about their task. The one holding the cross to her breast and putting her whole faith in God (who is maybe acting through the horse). The other feels her way along the wall while trying to see what she can of the ground from under the blindfold. I didn’t use it as a specific reference, but there’s a definite influence of Pontormo’s Annunciation with the nuns. That abstract shape of the robes, with the bare foot extending out the bottom. 

I got a slightly damaged 1/12 scale model horse cheap from ebay that I used with one of my poseable figures as the model for Godiva. This enabled me to get the perspective/foreshortening to my liking. I gave Godiva a bit more weight around the middle than the figure, cuz maybe she’s already had kids, so she could talk to Leofric with the authority of the mother of his heir, whereas a younger, probably more compliant Godiva wouldn’t have challenged him.

This years Christmas card/Room for the life

 

This has been a hard Christmas to come up with a card for. It’s so very much like last year. And not in a good way. 

In the end I took my inspiration from Kate Bush. Kate’s song, “Room for the life” off her first album led me to the idea of presenting Mary as a woman. So breastfeeding. I don’t think I need say any more. Apart from maybe, “Mama woman aha.”

Guy of Warwick does it again!

 

I got the news that my Guy of Warwick print has got a place in Wright Hassall’s 175th Anniversary Calendar. I’m so pleased. 

Having my work in the calendar certainly hints at there being a lot of variety in it. I can’t wait to see what else got in. 

As I hinted in my “making of” post, I’ve been working on a Lady Godiva companion print which is almost done. So that should be posted here soon.

Another home-made press

My wife has been trying to persuade me to demonstrate printing at public events, using one of my presses. However, even the original car-jack press was just way too heavy and cumbersome to schlep across town or wherever.

So. This one. Using the principle of a proofing press - bed/frame with a moveable roller - I made a bench-hook frame with side rails for use with a handy TALA rolling pin I bought a few years back for another purpose. The first test print has gone OK, even with some crappy cheap ink.

The frame will comfortably take A4+ and has overall dimensions around A3 size so should fit in a bag for transport. All ready to go out and about.

Inktober 2021

Last year my son and I did this pretty much for our own amusement. Though I did post my efforts on this blog in lumps of 10 here, here and here. 

I decided to go for it this year, and have posted each day on Instagram. I’ve also collected all 31 drawings in a little flipbook for your amusement.

I’ve been quite pleased with the results, and its been an opportunity to try different pens and brushes and various styles/techniques. It has also coincided with a class where we’ve been looking at Rembrandt. So this has also been an opportunity to explore his chiaroscuro approach to etching through pen-and-ink drawing.

Compass

 

It's Inktober time again, so I've been doing ink drawings and posting them over on instagram. I did a drawing of praying hands for "Compass" as in Moral Compass, which we seem to have lost. I decided to use the drawing as the basis for a print cuz you know, Durer and stuff. Also in a couple weeks there's a "sustainability" event at a local church. So if I can get a portable press made, I'll take this along and print it there.

I've decided I'll post all the Inktober drawings in a lump at the end of the month.

Dance of Death first proof

 

Tried this out on wallpaper, so the black is a bit salty but I'm happy with this arrangement of the 13 blocks. I just need to get some big sheets of decent smooth paper and I'm good to go.

Iceberg revisited

I had the idea recently of printing all the “Dance of Death” postcards on to a single sheet. Now that I have the etching press this seems possible. But I felt that the “I am an Iceberg” print was weaker than the others – the arms just don’t work right. So I’ve decided to do another version for the portmanteau printing. 

I’ve gone for a more close-up and intimate death this time. Now I’ve got to work out how to fit all 13 together.

Another Tea card: Venus/Aphrodite

I’ve got a wee plaster bust after the Venus de Milo that occasionally serves as a model for drawing. Very traditional. I thought I’d try one as a print – a kind of exercise in chiaroscuro. 

I find it useful to do these small things in between larger projects. It keeps my hand in with wielding the tools, and is a chance to try things out without risking a big bit of lino or paper.

21 Years of Warwickshire Open Studios

I shall be taking part in this exhibition at Rugby Art Gallery & Museum, starting next weekend (Saturday 18th – Thursday 30h September). It is one of a number of events across the county celebrating WOS’ 21st anniversary year. There will be a wide range of 2-D and 3-D work on show by 42 artists and makers, mainly from the Rugby area. 

The print I shall be showing is Arrangement: Flowers, Incense, Tank. From reading the list of exhibits, it looks like it’ll be the only still life in the exhibition. Though there are a couple of other flower pictures. It’ll be interesting to see how they manage to hang/arrange it all. 

Do pop in and check it out if you’re around.

Sunflowers (Tea card)

This is the second print I did for the sustainability event again on scrap card from tea bag boxes. I did a few drawings of some of the sunflowers in the garden first thing in the morning and copied 3 of them on to a block. 

I did some cutting of the lino while I was there, but didn’t manage to finish on the day. So I’ve finished it off back at home. 

Sunflowers are magnificent. It’s not just a size thing, though that helps. They have that very human habit of moving from perfection to lumpy comfort to decay before your very eyes. And they do it so individually, too.

It’s that (naked) woman again and some thoughts on one of the major problems of art

My wife persuaded me to do a bit of demonstrating at a local sustainability event. I decided to do something with a reuse vibe. Printing on some card from tea-bag boxes and other packaging. I’d also got some small off-cuts of lino that were the right sort of size (about 3”x 4.5”). 

And I reused the drawing, too. - revisiting the seated woman I’d used in this postcard and the Song of Solomon print with the fig. 

When I’m doing these things, I get transported to all kinds of places. This time I couldn’t help but think about something Tal R said about drawing people. The problems presented by eyes, nose, hands,,, and feets. Don’t talk about feets. 

I’ve noticed this in many of the great works of art I love. Look at Velásquez’ “Rokeby Venus” – see how he cleverly avoids having to do feet. Look at Manet’s Olympia – see how one foot is out of sight and the other is obscured by a handily dangling slipper. Titian in the Venus of Urbino has a go, but gets more tentative as he gets down the leg. I was surprised by a rather lovely lithograph by Lovis Corinth. His “Curtains of Solomon” illustration for the Song of Solomon has an expertly rendered woman finished off with a hastily scribbled pair of shoes. Even Schiele would prefer his models’ feet stockinged or in boots. Otherwise he hardly drew the feet at all. 

There are of course plenty of artists who can manage feet. Bronzino could do lovely feet. And Goya. His Naked Maja has beautiful, dainty feet. Though her breasts are strangely pneumatic – it’s as if the model had small breasts and Goya expanded them without reference to gravity. And Matisse. Matisse isn’t afraid of feet. Even an Odalisque who could be wearing silk slippers. Bare feet. Sometimes quite big feet. Farm girls' feet. He’s right, though. You just have to do it.

Candle Dancers of Death

Totenkerzentänzerinnen?? With apologies to Emil Nolde. Not that he was much given to apologising himself. 

I always loved the energy of Nolde’s candle dancers. So when I wanted a dance of Death with a frenetic vibe, his painting/woodcut seemed the natural source. 

Last year when I began bringing Uncle Death into my work, especially the Trigger Warning series, I approached the subject with a sense of sadness. Almost an especial sadness for all those deaths overshadowed by the coronavirus hysteria, But now, I am more frightened of the world. Not frightened of disease, or death. More the collective madness that has overtaken us. An enthusiasm with sweeping everything away. It reminds me of the enthusiasm with which the youth of Europe marched off to war in 1914. 

So this. Not Uncle Death. More the Death Sisters, cutting abstract shapes before a miniature model of Hell.

Concentration

My wife has a “hole” in the vision of one eye, caused by a bleed inside the eyeball. It apparently manifests itself as a greyish patch in the middle of her field of vision. Most of the time the “good” eye compensates and she hardly notices. But when she’s concentrating, or doing close work she needs to close the “bad” eye as it interferes too much with what she’s seeing. 

It’s normally when she’s occupied with something that I can manage to try a quick drawing before she moves. I decided to work this one up as a print. I felt I’d captured something of her in the way she unequivocally screws that eye shut. No half measures. 

Interestingly Edvard Munch developed a similar complaint and, being Edvard Munch, painted what it looked like several times. Check it out here.

Another press

This one’s an etching press made out of an old mangle. An ebay purchase. The Guy of Warwick print and its off-cut fragments have given me the opportunity to get used to its funny ways. I’m still not wholly used to how the adjustable pressure works, and I think I tend to overdo it, but I’m getting there. 

The previous owner(s) had a more temporary way of supporting the bed as it moved from side to side, so I made this structure with drawers under that I think makes economical use of the space. I also made another bed with side-rails for lino so that I don’t have monster pressure and don’t get the big bump up and down as it negotiates the thickness of the block. 

The press was also missing its foldaway handle, but a handy washing-machine shock absorber has made a strangely comfy alternative.

 

The making of… Guy of Warwick

Okay. Warwickshire. I’m so not a landscape painter. So my response to Warwickshire had to be… human. So I wanted something peopleish that says Warwickshire to me. Had to be Guy of Warwick, really. The clue’s in the name. And slaying the Dun Cow. On Dunsmore Heath. Where I live. 

You may object that its a Mediaeval story. Where’s the relevance? But relief printing is a Mediaeval craft. So it fits. And as I suggested in the previous post, there’s plenty for today if you think about it. It’s not just for dead people. 

This is the first version of the picture as it came into my mind. 

 Man and horse and cow as one combined shape. When I was a kid the Daily Mirror carried a comic strip called Andy Capp. It was the misadventures of a gambling, hard-drinking, brawling working-class bloke. It spoke of the environment I grew up in, and seemed perfectly normal to me. Anyway, the periodic fights outside the pub were shown as a grey cloud with fists and boots sticking out at random places. That’s how I saw this battle. Very cartoon-like, which seemed to me to fit with an overall chap-book vibe. 

I started trying out what the different “characters” would be like: Guy, the Dun Cow and the horse.

 

Then other things started creeping in. I thought about placing the battle on Knightlow Hill with a view of Coventry in the distance. And an audience. The audience ended up being a monk and a naked woman caught in flagrante delicto behind a wayside cross. 

 

I’d got some way in cutting the block before I decided this was all just a bit much and reverted to the original idea. Hence the two printed fragments of the naked woman and the cross. 

My wife suggested printing it in brown, “so it would be a dun cow.” It also has that sepia/faded look that hints at age. I always try to cut “meaningfully”, even if I’m clearing largish areas. I cut the sky horizontally, the sloping ground at an angle, the long grass in clumps. Then I see if and when any of it shows up in the proof prints, I can decide whether it adds anything to the design and cut away or let stand as I see fit. 

I’ve enjoyed this foray into “historic Warwickshire” so much, I feel fired up to do another similar scale picture as a companion. Lady Godiva, I think. A different kind of heroism, but heroism nonetheless. Let’s see if I manage it.

 

Guy of Warwick slaying the Dun Cow

I’ve done this for Wright Hassall’s 175th anniversary calendar competition. The theme is Warwickshire and the deadline 30th September so still plenty of time to get your picture in. So... Well… This.

It’s a stupid story, I know. But it’s spoken to me as I made the picture. The Big Question it provokes in me is, “How can you be a hero when the Age of Dragons is over?” It’s a big, Big Question and really relevant to young men today who wish to win the hand of fair Felice.

I don’t have an answer, but I feel this is a way of asking the question.

 

Fragment: Lonesome Cross

Another off-cut from the larger print. It’s interesting how much sadder this looks now that it’s removed from its original context. This is still in its rough-and-ready state. If it had remained on the original, I might have tidied it up a bit, but I think I’ll let it stand.  

Again a picture in search of a meaning. 

It’s smaller than postcard size – but it fits nicely on the reverse of a tea-bag box. So I might use it as a give-away.

Fragment: Naked woman open-mouthed in the woods

This print began life as part of another, larger print. But the large print ended up being too busy so I cut off the unnecessary bits. With a little bit of tweaking this piece has become a postcard. Its meaning… who knows? It’s a bit like a fragment of an antique Greek vase, where you can make up the story that it’s part of.

I’ll talk about the larger print in its proper place when I’m finished.

The one about the bundle of myrrh

This is the third of my Song of Solomon prints. It is Chapter 1, Verse 13, “A bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved to me, he shall lie all night between my breasts.” 

The verse conjured that post-coital moment where the man instantly crashes out and the woman is left wanting to talk about bundles of myrrh and stuff. She is of course putting a brave face on it.  

The design for the woman came together quite quickly. There is a bit of this naked woman postcard in her. He was something of a challenge though, it was hard getting him sufficiently lifeless. I quite like the Harry Potter arm thing that just happened in one of the various versions. I think it’s him starting to turn to jelly. 

I fiddled around with colour – I thought maybe some shadows because it is night, but decided to just colour the carpet/bedspread to make it more en suite with the other two prints. 

I was delighted to find that Lovis Corinth did illustrations for the Song of Solomon back in 1911. There are 28 illustrations, though it seems plenty of them are vignettes and illuminated letters. Still, I don’t think I’ll do that many. I’ve got another 3 forming in my mind that are landscape, or rather marine format. So I shall potter away at those and see if any others occur. I’ve also got another, non-Biblical picture I’m working on for a competition thing. So I need to let that one develop, too.

On being "edgy"

I’ve had my work described as “edgy” twice in the past week or so. By other artists, too.

It did surprise me. I hadn’t thought I was that edgy. I thought I was just doing art.

Maybe they meant edgy for the rural backwater I live in. Maybe the real edgy stuff happens elsewhere. Maybe its all relative. Or not.

There is for sure a mainstream art here, a very safe, don’t-scare-the-horses art. I definitely feel I don’t belong. But I always felt like that. Didn’t belong in the bank. Didn’t belong in the quango. Didn’t belong in the working class neighbourhood I grew up in. Don’t belong in the middle class one I live in now. I’ve lived my life on the edges, so edgy I guess is just normalcy for me. It’s just my human condition, isn’t it?

And I can’t resist the temptation to poke the status quo. So I added the picture above from a dozen years back when I was in a corporate world. OK. I’m edgy.

I’m also in the happy position that I don’t need to chase an income any more. So I don’t have to heed the siren calls of customers’ dollars. “Do it like this,” they say, “And we’ll buy you.” So I can say what I need to say, Put all the soul I want into it and adopt a totally take-it-or-leave-it attitude. And some people like it, and are willing to give my stuff house room. That’s all the encouragement I need. One or two people hunt me out or stumble upon me by accident, and by some miracle kinda get what I’m saying.

As irritating as it is to be out on the edge of everything, in my heart of hearts I know that I don’t want to be mainstream. I don’t want the baggage that comes with it. I don’t want the compromise and I don’t want to be on the committee. For in the mainstream, there’s always a committee.

The fig tree putteth forth her green figs….

The second of my illustrated verses from the Song of Solomon. This one is Chapter 2, Verse 13, “The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”

This image evolved quite a bit during its making. I was always going to have the woman, the man and the fig, but the composition changed as I went along.

I did use the woodcut of the fig I did earlier, but I originally had in mind using it with very opaque ink, partially obscuring the couple. In the end I liked the semi-transparent green, so I overprinted the green on to a more detailed black lino print of the fig.

The woman is based on the same drawing I used for the postcard of a few days back, but simplified and reversed colour-wise. With the man, the earlier postcard print gave me the slightly gnarly look I was after. His pose came to me as I was talking to some visitors during WOS. I told them I wanted him reaching down and taking her hand, and it sounded right, so that’s what I went for.

I like the black/smooth of the woman contrasted with the white/rough of the man. It gives a bit of a yin/yang vibe to them. Deeply unfashionable, I know.

Over all, I’m pretty pleased with how this one turned out.

Man - framed

This one’s a sort of companion piece to the woman I did on Thursday. They are both practice pieces for the next Song of Solomon print. And I’ve given them both frames. I’ve tapered his, firstly to give an illusion of perspective. Is he standing in the entrance to a cellar? Or is it an empty frame he’s holding around himself? The second thing it does is emphasize his shoulders. 

So I’ve got the larger print shaping up quite nicely, but I don’t think I’ll finish it before the end of Open Studios. But that was a deadline I plucked out of the air, anyway. These things take as long as they take.

I sold the first one of these before the ink was dry yesterday. One of the Open Studios visitors spotted him hanging on the drying rack and asked if she could buy one. Some of my wife’s friends were here and liked him, too. So I can see some more naked men postcards appearing in the future.

Woman - framed

Another naked woman on a postcard. This one turned out to be a touch Vallotton-ish, I think.

In my preparation for the next Song of Solomon print, I thought I’d do some “sketches” in lino. Try outs for the bigger picture, as it were. This is a sort of try out for shapes and stuff, and is somewhat different in the final version I have in my head. I’ve got another small one in my head I hope to start on today before the bigger print which I hope to tackle over the weekend.

Green Fig

Not a usual look for me. It’s something I’ve been working on as part of another piece. But then I thought given its size and shape, it might work as a stand-alone image on a card.

I’ve also got some blank brown/grey cards that I hadn’t thought of a use for. So this seemed an ideal opportunity to try them out, too. 

This one's a wood cut print. For no better reason than I wanted to have a go with the decent hangi-to I bought a little while back. The darker green ink is stuff left over from the still life with a tank, applied with a bit of sponge on top of the brighter green. 

Have to work on the rest of the bigger picture now.

Comely… as the Curtains of Solomon

I’ve been thinking recently about making some prints based on verses from the Song of Songs. When I was about 17 I thought that I ought to actually read some of the Bible. Everything I’d heard so far were interpretations of hand-picked stories. So lets read the words, I thought.

It’s a big, fat book and quite daunting, so I thought I’d pick something short to start with. Oh, the Song of Songs/Solomon. That’s only a few pages. Turned out it’s about love and sex and passion. I hadn’t expected that

Listening to Kate Bush’s Song of Solomon recently prompted me to go back and read it again. And it’s chock full of inspiration for art. As Kate says, ‘Just pick any line, “Comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love.”’ I might use that one, too. 

Anyway. This is Solomon 1:5. “I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.”

For the window shutter, I used a piece of hardboard grille from a radiator box. Does that count as wood?

Rugby Artists and Makers first exhibition

Today the first Rugby Artists & Makers Network exhibition opens in the Floor One gallery at Rugby Art Gallery and Museum. (Catalogue here)

We were offered the gallery space 4 weeks ago and we have put together a quite remarkable exhibition in that time. I feel I could do with a good rest after being part of the hanging team yesterday, but I’ve got to crack on with Warwickshire Open Studios over the next couple days.

Do check it out if you’re in Rugby over the next 2 weeks. The exhibition runs until 8 July..

Making money

£4 notes.

In my head this is a complex satire. First of all it’s about my fellow artists who “produce” giclee prints. They make a picture and then get some fancy-schmancy colour photocopies made. “Not real printing,” says I. Puts me in mind of one of the Goon Shows:

Grytpype-Thynne: Here’s a photograph of a four pound note. 

Neddy Seagoon: But the four pound note in the photograph – it’s a forgery!

So. These are real £4 notes. Price £4. And I promise I will give £4 to anyone who brings one back to me. So it’s real money to anyone who believes me. It currently has an exchange rate of £1 = £1, but as the government printing presses are working much faster than mine, these Bank of Steve notes may well end up strengthening against the UK£.

Not the Rokeby Venus

 

It has been about 6 weeks since I’d done any cutting. I’ve been too busy printing, framing, hanging and all kinds of other stuff in preparation for Warwickshire Open Studios.

So I thought I’d do another postcard while waiting for visitors yesterday. Get my hand in again. I’d been aiming to do a version of Velásquez’ Venus and I’ve done a good few drawings. But I didn’t feel happy. It just seemed too much of a copy. So I expanded my range of inspirations for nudes-from-the-rear. The woman here is based on one by Ferdinand Hodler in his painting Night.

She seems more relaxed, somehow. And she has … feet! Feet are so difficult to do, even Velásquez and Manet side-step the problem. But I wanted to do some feet in this one. Tiny ones cut out of lino.

What she’s doing in Velásquez’ studio, I don’t know. On the mobile phone, probably.

Catalogues and Flipbook of my cards and postcards

 In advance of Warwickshire Open Studios art weeks I've gathered all (I think) the cards together into catalogues, so people can easily see what's available:

...and, just because I'd done the work, I've done a flipbook of the 3 booklets together in a big fat tankobon.  

 CLICK HERE

 

PS. I've also done a catalogue for my full-size prints to date

HERE

Warwickshire Open Studios – Summer Art Weeks 2021

 Given no further government restrictions, I’ll be open for this years Open Studios event, 19 June – 4 July.

Here’s my Profile Page on the Warwickshire Open Sudios site.

You can find the specific days and times on my Summer Art Weeks Page

And on This Page in the Flip Book Brochure

Tea Ceremony cut down to fit on a card

 I'd been aiming for a while to do this, but found myself dithering about where to make the first incision,

Here's the original post with the portrait-format image. I did a lot of playing around with a card mask before deciding where to do the cutting. There were a couple of altternative possibilities, but I liked this one best, preserving the whole of the hand holding the cup.

Preparing for Warwickshire Open Studios 21

In preparation for last year’s Studio-visits-that-never-happened, we made an exhibition space at one end of the barn. So the challenge this year is, what do I want to show? And more importantly, what will fit? 

I soon realised that working from a list wasn’t going to work. And I was unwilling to frame everything and then decide – so I resorted to some cardboard modelling.

So here it is: a one-tenth scale model. 

 It has helped enormously. I’ve ended up with an arrangement I don’t think I’d have come up with otherwise. Shuffling the tiny pictures is a really low-stakes method. 

I really enjoyed doing the little drawings of my work. Much more fun than photo-editing on the computer. Using the woman for scale is an idea I’ve shamelessly stolen from Eric Gaskell’s class. Actually I think I stole the whole cardboard-engineering thing from Eric, really. 

And finally here’s an aerial view that you won’t get in real life.

 

Woman with her head in a towel…

Or maybe it’s, “I’m washing my hair.”

This one’s a birthday card for my wife. Some time around Christmas she came downstairs after a bath with her hair bundled up in a towel-turban. She used to do post-washing wrapping like this and wander about the house a lot in the past. But I hadn’t noticed her do this for a while. Anyway. She was sat at her computer concentrating on something or other when I did a quick drawing.

With her birthday coming up I went looking for a likely drawing about a week or so ago and reworked the rough original to make a print. I think it is kinda like her, and captured in a very simple design. I took about a minute on the original drawing and then about a day, off-and-on, to get to the printed card.

Matisse woman

Here’s another naked woman on a postcard. This one is based on a couple of paintings by Matisse. It’s a pose he used several times. Matisse is a sensual painter, like Rubens. You want to touch, don’t you?
 

Because Matisse doesn’t burden his work with a wealth of detail, I didn’t plan this too much and just went for it.
 

The bedding proved to be the most problematic part of this one. I had to work it, and rework it, and rework it. My original plan was to have the bedding below/to the front of the woman, but then her upper arm read as part of a pillow. So I added the bit of pillow above/behind her arm which seems to make the arm read properly.

Still life with lovers

I’m returning here to the drawings I did back in 2019 in Eric Gaskell’s class. Back then, I used one as the basis for a linocut at a workshop of Eric’s that then got accepted for that year's Rugby Open exhibition. 

This particular arrangement has a convex mirror behind the skull and glass(es). In the original drawing there’s an outline of two people seated in the background. I quite liked having people there, but it seemed a bit purposeless. I felt I either had to make that part of the background more explicit or more uncanny. I had been reading a book about Edvard Munch and it was still lying at the side of the bed with one of the versions of the Kiss on the cover. That was what was needed, but not the naked one. The clothed version gave a more contrasty image. It carries its own uncanny baggage, too. Which I like.

I felt I needed to break up the black to the right of the lovers, so I just improvised something while channelling my inner Munch. The result ended up more like the Scream than I’d consciously intended, but I like it. It adds a level of anxiety that completes the whole, I think.

Ghostly Maenir

I felt that the original Maenir print didn’t achieve quite the vibe I wanted, but I thought recently there was maybe a smaller print in there, trying to get out. So I’ve brought her back for an experiment, printed against a roughly-cut and gnarled-up block, around 10”x8” in size.

I like the background block. There’s something that says pine forest to me, or some kind of mountain landscape maybe. Or pines on a moor. (It’s just occurred to me that pine moor is “Matsubara” – my favourite Japanese woodblock artist). A good place for this standing stone.

This rendition makes her more ghostly. And some of the early impressions came out even more so. She looms out of the subtle broken-up landscape, like out of a fog. Maybe she’s more like Kate Bush’s poor, dead Cathy here, “Heathcliff, it’s me, your Cathy, I’ve come home. I’m so cold. Let me in your window.”

Olympia

Another naked woman on a postcard.

I did a bit of organising of the big sheaf of art postcards we’d collected over the years. (Who knew we had so many Madonna and Child postcards?) Anyway, among the nudes/Venuses was the Venus by Titian in the Uffizi (I think it was previously called the Venus d’Urbino, so was probably in the hands of the Montefeltro family at some point). The painting was the inspiration for Manet’s Olympia, so I thought I’d do my own version.

The young woman in Manet’s painting looks like a girl I was at school with, so I’ve always felt a bit weird about it. Also her hand is definitely more “Keep Out!” than the Titian. So Titian it was. I thought I’d portray her with eyes closed here, putting her in her own internal world. Enjoying whatever fantasy is on her mind.

Arrangement: Flowers, Incense, Tank

A still life. I felt it was about time I did another one. The great thing about still lives is that you are in control. You decide what is in… and what is out.

I had done some colour work involving over-printing with extended inks in the “Pestilence” prints and the Christmas card. So this one is the next step. Using pink, yellow and greenish-grey – sometimes over-printed. Sometimes not. The use of colour is intended to camouflage the tank, to make it the third or fourth thing you see. I feel that left as a black-and-white print, everything would be there at once. So it makes the extra bother of colour worthwhile.

I’m trying out mixing textures here. The smoothness of the incense burner. The gnarly raku texture of the vase. The dull flatness of the tank. Again this pushes the tank back, pushing it into the shadows.

This is a picture about feminine pursuits. Our son showed us the Japanese anime series “Girls und Panzer” which gave me the insight into what could be included in what is essentially a flower picture. And broaden the scope of the “girly”.

The Hand Book

 

This little video is a kind of summary of the “Meditations” – prints of my own hands in action – that I have done to date. I also think this is a fair summary of any “philosophy” that is behind them. What I don’t know is whether I drew on some personal well of ideas and attitudes to bring these things forth, or whether the ideas took form in the making of the prints. Something of both, I’d guess.

Tea Card: Still Life with Lamp

 Uncle Death again. Can't go too long without him making an appearance. Seemed appropriate for a tea-card (printed on card from tea-bag boxes) as a giveaway, too. You really have to want one of these to take one, don't you.

We've got a couple of these large glass parafin lamps, and I've been thinking for a while about how to represent them in print. So this is a kind of experiment. The top especially worked out better than I'd anticipated. So I'm quite pleased. I might do a large version one day.