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.

More fun with local landmarks

 I added another couple of foregrounds that I could use with the local landmark prints I made for the Diwali thing. This time vaguely Christmas themed. The first with shepherd and sheep. The second with a moose. Very Christmas. These three are the only ones I've got left. Will add more if/when I reprint.

Rugby Open 2024

 First time I've got the three prints I entered accepted. At first, I felt a bit gloomy about the prospect of entering, a feeling that I hadn't done enough good work this year. My wife suggested I put forward my two successful entries to the Leamington Open at the beginning of the year. Seemed like a plan. But I swapped out Blackthorn, Cemex for Artist's Bedroom, Cemex - as the latter is a bona fide 2024 print - and stuck with Skinny Woman. I then decided to add Close Work (the colour version) - it's one I wrestled with, and came good in the end.

Eric Gaskell felt that having Eileen Cooper RA on the judging panel would be good for me, as we're both artisss that have a narrative approach to people in their art. Looks like he was right.

The show runs from 30 November to 20 February next year.

Leave it to Jerome...

 We have received a number of donated books at the Alex, so we thought if we had a library of arty-ish books people could read, that would be cool. So this is my first try at a book plate. I thought St Jerome would be suitably bookish, and his lion would offer an admonishment to anyone who wanted to walk off with it. I think this one needs a couple of small tweaks, but I;m not sure C will like it.

Inktober 2024

 I had a touch of artist's block at the start of the month, so Inktober forced me to actually sit down and draw every day. This year's words struck me as some kind of adventure, so they turned into a story...

Close Work revisited

 This last couple of weekends I worked on some woodblocks to add colour to the black-and-white version of Close Work, I used some plywood from an old wardrobe that had a rough and open grain to it. To give a nice textured effect. I'm happier with it now,

Elephant and Cemex

 

Another elephant made for the Library's Fun Palace thing

Coming Soon! Anna Bloom in book form

 I decided to get this printed in advance of the Rugby Book Festival comng up on October 19th. I've put Anna Bloom together with Trigger Warning: Dance of Death and The Hand book into a slim volume that I will attempt to sell at the Alex. The box containing the first 25 should be here on the 16th. In the meantime here's the flipbook version.

Elephant and (inset landmark here)

 There's an upcoming event this weekend organised by the library. It's got a Diwali theme to it. This is a part of the Alex's contribution. Cards that kids (of all ages) could colour and decorate. I did five blocks (3 landmarks and 2 elephants) that could be mixed and matched to make six 2-block prints. Like this. 

It's that woman again

 In a bid to rediscover my mojo after a summer of physical labour on the Alex, I took a couple of blocks from an earlier piece (see here and here) and tweaked them and combined them with printing from some old texture wallpaper I'd removed from a wall. Like the previous one, it's not brilliant, but it allowed me to proceed with the sense of experimentation with pretty low stakes. The wallpaper came out a lot better than I expected.

Close work

 I've done a couple of things this month that I've not felt good about. But not so bad that I consigned them instantly to the bin. This is the first. It's based on a drawing I did earlier in the year. I think it needs something, not sure what. I'm thinking about adding colour, but in the meantime, it just sits there looking at me until I decide.

Steve's Solo Show 26th-28th July

 This has been a very interesting show to put together,, I have filled the Alex with around 100 individual pieces (from postcard soze up) dating from the Toiti von Tranz picture I did back in July 2019. Because some of the older works have been in storage, it has been fun to dig them out and find that they are indeed okay. Nothing to be ashamed of.

It has been good to dispay the two series of "illustrattions" - Anna Bloom and Dance of Death - all together with the words. I definitely thing it'd be worthwhile putting them in book form if I can ge it done cheaply enough.

Boy Meets Girl 2

 Pleased I managed to do this second one before we close the Alex for the summer. This couple were much more subdue than the forst. They seemed more deep in thought. I gave the young woman glasses, because it seemed to give that thoughtful air, and it also distinguished her from the girl in the other picture.

People are lovely, especially when they're alone or in couples. It's when they're in larger groups they become scary...

Boy Meets Girl I

 I call this Boy Meetts Girl I because another couple stat on the wall outside the next day and I drew them as well. So with luck I'll make a print of that, too.

There is something so beautiful about the everyday, the banal. This is the well-spring of hope for the future. The little things that always have been. That we hope always wil be. Amen.

Blackthorn, Cemex card

 Over the past week, a couple of people asked me if I had a card of my Blackthorn, Cemex print. I don't think that commercially-printed versions of my prints is my schtick, really. So aftter the second person asked, I thought, "Well, heck, make a card-size version. You've already done the preparatory work." So I made this version yesterday afternoon and this morning.

I printed 12 today. Because the card and the original print used the grey sludge made from scraped-up leftover ink to make the base colour, I can delight in no two "editions" being the same

Man at work

 This is an experimental reduction linocut postcard. I've got an idea for a larger print featuring the men in orange, so this ia a kind of ttest for shape and colour. Time was dressing in orange singled you out as belonging to some mystical cult, but now it makes you a working-class hero.

The colours here were red, yellow, blue. I love how black the final layer has come out.

Adventurer

 "You have to be young to print," said HAP Grieshaber, "Printing is an adventure." (Drucken ist ein Abenteuer, 1978)

Some days I feel younger than on others. But I am ready for the adventure. "Printing is an encounter of chance with meaning," he says in the same essay. That is what makes it an adventure, what makes printing so exciting.

Rugby Artists Group Exhibition 2024: Voyage

 Just back from hanging this exhibition at Floor One Gallery, Rugby Art Gallery and Museum. I feel fair worn out, so I'm definitely going to have to go and see it myself, to get an idea of what it looks like.

My works that are in this show are Circe and Calypso. Back in the realm of history painting printing. Poster is by Mjay. The show runs from tomorrow, 14th May through to 1st June.

Give us this day...

 A return to hands. It's been a little while. In fact, its based on a little drawing I did for Inktober 2020. And because it was food festival in Rugby yesterday. The question du jour was, "How long does it take?" So one answer could be 3 and a half years... But in that time it worked out about 2 days drawing, one day cutting and proofing, including lots of messing about on lino off-cuts to come up with what I felt was a suitable texture for bread. Then about half a day printing while mostly chatting with people.

Calypso

 

 A companion piece to Circe. Poor Calypso weeping at Odysseus' departure on his raft. Prefering the risks of the open seas for the possibility of a return to Ithaca over immortality and her love.

Circe

 This year's Rugby Artists Group exhibition is on the horizon, with a theme of "Voyages". There's nothing in my recent oeuvre that speaks to me of voyaging so I had to come up with something. Classical literature is always a good source so the Odyssey seemed ideal. 

Circe was the first that came to mind, with some of the cursed sailors. The play of white and black areas is something thatt has come from the workshops that Eric Gaskell and I run. So I need to get it out of my system. I've got a couple of 10x8 frames in stock that will take this print and the companion piece of Calypso that I'm working on next.

Artist's bedroom, Cemex

 The second print in this series. I was talking to Clare Pentlow about my idea for doing views of Cemex and she mentioned seeing it from a bedroom window (maybe her mum's). So that sent me thinking about famous bedrooms. So here we have a take on Van Gogh's. Though the chair is mine, and the pics on the wall.

Doing these larger prints does take time. Especially when doing several colours. I used several smaller blocks stuck on a board for the red and yellow to reduce the sheer amount of cutting. You can see the yellow one in the pic below.

Leamington Open 2024

 I've got two works accepted for the Leamington Open. Really chuffed about this one, it's really tough to get in as its such a small gallery. The woman who spoke to me on the phone said getting two accepted is "rare". The two works are Blackthorn, Cemex and Skinny woman. There have been a number of exhibition calls the last couple months and I held these back especially because I felt they were some of my strongest recent work.

The exhibition runs from 2 Feb until 12 May

Postscript 2 Feb 2024. I went along to the lauch last night to find that Skinny Woman was one of the works commended by the judges. Didn't get the big prize, but I think this is a pat on the back worth having. I spoke to one of the judges who said they tried not to have more than one work from any entrant, but the overall winner and I managed to sneak the extra one in.

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Coventry Art Societies Exhibition (CASE)

 2 Feb - 3 Mar 2024 at Gallery 1, Herbert Art Gallery, Coventry.

This biennial exhibition was extended this year to include art groups from around Warwickshire. So I submitted some work under the umbrella of Rugby Artists and Makers.

I've had two pieces accepted - Story without words (consisting of five prints from the Anna Bloom series) and Blue Coat. It's going to be a big show. Can't wait to see what it looks like hanging.

 

Rugby Artists and Makers: Go Fourth! Exhibition

 In the same slot as last year at Floor One Gallery in Rugby Art Gallery and Museum - the last couple of weeks of the Rugby Open in the big Gallery Upstairs. (23 January - 3 February)

My work for this exhibition is Poppies. Its a work that has grown on me over time. I like it much more than when I first did it. So I feel it should show its face around the place so that others get to appreciate it too.

PS. 22/01/24 - exhibition hung today, probably the best looking RA&M exhibition to date, Link to the catalogue here.