Pigeon

 We were given a free stall at a VE Day market in town. For me, VE Day equals pigeons in Trafalgar Square, because my dad was there on the day and had his photo taken with pigeons like you did back then.

Anyhoo I thought I'd print these "plein air" as it were. Didn't work. The atmospheric conditions meant the ink didn't dry. But it was a fun evening anyway.

Rugby Artists Group exhibition: Seasons

 We're over half way through this exhibition now. There's about a dozen RAG members exhibiting around 40 works between them. I decided to submit my 3 Cemex prints (here, here and here) as they offer views of the cement works with different moods to them that could represent different times of year.

Girl with Flowers - Fall

 

I don't know about this one. The reason I started was because the upcoming Rugby Artists Group exhibition is entitled "Seasons". So I thought of various seasons of the girl with flowers. This one's kinda what I was aiming for, but it needs some time in the drawer for me to think objectively about it. So I've gone to Plan B for the exhibition. (Which I will go into in a later post).

I listened to Tal R on the Danish Originals podcast just recently. He says something like Failure is the artist's shadow. But it's not a bad shadow because it stops you from travelling the well-worn path. I've had a number of ideas that either haven't gone anywhere, or if they have, the end result just hasn't lit my boat. This one isn't a total disaster, so it hasn't gone straight in the bin. There's something in it that I might push forward with, and it might make sense in the context of future work, so be worth saving.

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.