Gap

So I’ve been totally remiss at keeping my blog up to date with all my work over the last few months. I wont go into any lengthy explanations as to the why – Instead here’s an overview of some of the bits I’ve completed in that time :

Unrest is a hand-finished woodblock print I started back in 2004, but was unable to complete within the over short time frame the course gave us. The blocks are somewhere our bottomless pit of a storage unit in Wgtn, so I finished the top two layers by hand in gouache and ink. Edition of 8

Back to the South American Tanager birds paired with coffee plants. Again, first of four that are in the works… Sidetracked again

Lastly a pair of native New Zealand Piwakawaka (Fantails) as per request for a friend of mine …Who then never got back to me about the piece. Ah well!

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Relief Print : Woodblock

This is the last instalment in my relief series – The third and final print I made during the four week evening class I took at Australian Print Workshop over in Fitzroy. Again, its a two colour print like my last. But this time using a woodblock as the relief medium, each colour printed from a separately carved plate.

This process involved cutting the key plate first – Even though it ends up being printed last. The key plate is then inked up and printed, the resulting image then transferred back onto the secondary plate to use as a guide.

When I started thinking about the image I wanted to cut, I knew the key plate would print up black, but our teacher Simon was choosing a ‘mystery’ colour for the second plate.  This miffed me a bit, because it meant coming up with an image that much harder… A basic two colour design that would look ok no matter which colour was picked.  In the end I went with an Anime scene I’ve been meaning to paint up for the last 6 years or so. The aim was to keep it mainly black and white, with the secondary colour to fill the background only. Hence the way I cut out my key plate.

Anyways I somehow lucked out. The secondary colour to be chosen a beige flesh tone. As I hadn’t yet cut my second plate, I reassessed my image and carved out different areas than the original plan. And so the background is now left in white.

I suppose this way I have the opportunity to carve a third block to colour in this area should I choose to print these blocks up again. And I can alway hand finish the prints I’ve already made if it keeps bothering me, which it may well do… See I went and used that grainy first transfer off my key plate as a guide and worked it up in gouache. Now the two-colour prints have an unfinished feel if compared side by side.

And so. After cutting these blocks, I can say I personally think that laminate wood is absolute shit for carving into.  Sure its a softer wood for easy cutting – But the top layer of veneer tends to lift off on its own in the finer ares, so my image was left with less detail than I would have liked. Not cool. Def. gonna stick w vinyl next time!

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Relief Print : Lino cut reduction

I fully meant to upload the rest of my pics from the print classes I’ve just completed last Tuesday, but then I had a week of not sleeping properly… As in not managing to get to sleep till 3.30 or so (Tui wakes up between 5.30-6 of late) Or if I did manage to get to sleep, waking up again at 2 and finally drifting off again at 5, only to be woken up 1/2 hour later.  Gah thanks brain, so not when I want to do my thinking!

It means I’ve had a week of feeling a bit low, and def. not up to anything creative like painting – Or writing about it either.  So yay for a weekend of sleep!  And finally here is the second instalment from my print class:

This one is a two colour reduction print using a ‘silk cut’ lino block – So both colours were printed off the same block. I started by cutting away where I wanted the white exposed, printing in red. Then I cut back into the same block to carve away all the areas I wanted to stay red, and printed the top plate over the first print with black.

Love love love how it turned out, though learnt that I much prefer vinyl blocks to lino… which has a tendency to flake, and left smudgy edges on a couple of my prints from the exposed matting fibre from where I cut away at the sides.

I managed to print up six prints of this in total – Because of the reduction method I can’t print any more, so it is an extremely limited print run.  I quite like how striking the skull looks and so may think about printing a series similar to this one in the future, if I get the chance to use a printing press again… Just waiting on APW announcing their next set of classes so I can book in to use their open access studio!

As a side note : Reduction printing also goes by the name of Suicide Printing – Because of the loss of the print block as you carve away the layers.  I reckon its pretty fitting to go w the Sugar skull design huh!?

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Pick me up

Yay got to go pick up all my prints today from AWP so exciting getting to bring them all home and unwrap them!

Pretty tired tonight… Tui was kind enough to wake me up at 5.30 by shaking cold water all over me from the doll she’d just washed in the sink. Not in a very fun way to wake up, though quick… Really hope my yelp of shock has put her off doing it again!  Anyways. Means I’ll post up the rest of the pics with close ups tomorrow. Night x

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Clean slate

Remember the Paper garden I pasted up in our little brick courtyard last year?       Well it was getting a bit weathered and old – I decided to scrub it off and start fresh.

Enter my new fascination with pitcher plants… I’m determined to hunt me down one of the Nepenthes variety.  I’ve got such a thing for hanging plants at the moment!

I learnt a bit from the orchid cut outs I put up last round – This time I went for brighter, denser colour. Plus I cut right down to the image edge rather than leaving a white border.  They def. jump out at you from the bricks way more.

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Colour block sugar skulls

These are a couple of 300 x 320 mm pics I painted up a couple of weeks ago for two of my friends who were over to visit – I was looking to do something bright with block colour, that was a little different from my other cartoon style work.

Sugar skulls feel like a nice lead on from the Día de los Muertos work I did last year… I always wanted to do a painted up version from the sketches I did at Outre’s Dr Sketchy class, but I’ve never really been into doing people – Skulls on the other hand, although seemingly everywhere at the moment, do work well.

I like how the resin top coat I painted on at the end has flattened out the colour even further, and how the indian ink outlining has glossed up, while most of the gouache paint has stayed matte.  Think I may need to add to this set when I find the time… Maybe with some more detailed patterns worked onto the skulls.

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4am with Tui…

This was Tui at 4am yesterday  *Well, apart from being the being a cat bit*  …Fun…

Vomit cat is actually a rather old character I came up with back when I was 19 or so.

This is how he looked the first time I drew him, on the whiteboard in the flat of the boy I rather liked at the time… Probably not so surprising that things didn’t go anywhere with the boy, though 10 years later he still remembers my little cat sketch in all its projectile glory – Even though vomit cat has never again featured with said byproduct anywhere outside my sketchbooks up until now.

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Add an Armadillo to that…

So after the success of my Red onion jam I thought I’d add to my cupboard with some spiced Nectarine chutney.  I made up Armadillo labels up this time round.

Decided to add to the cartoon series inspired by these little labels too.  So here are my Armadillos with their stacked up chutney hoard :

And Llama Llama sauce for the Spiced plum rocket fuel I plan to make up tomorrow… As I’ve left it way too late tonight to start anything cooking now.

I like the simplicity of these pieces. With the handmade brown fibre paper showing through where I’ve left the Animals, borders and jars raw and unpainted.

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Narwhals love Narwhal Jam

Inspired by my Narwhal jam labels.  I wanted to keep the natural brown look I had with the tape labels I made for my Red onion jam, so painted this cartoon on a natural handmade paper with raw fibre, leaving the narwhals and borders clean.

Picture measures 252 x 370mm – Its up in my Felt shop here.

I have three more sheets of this paper at the same size… Thinking I may have to use them make a series of four in this style.

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And from the sky rained the Festival…

A few years back I painted this comic page for a friends birthday.   I dont do cards.

It’s part one of two. …I used to be particularly bad at remembering to photograph new work when I finished it, I’m still dealing with this issue now. I’ve only recently had the chance to get hold of a pic of it, and its only a grainy iphone one at that. Hopefully at some point I’ll manage track down a photograph of the second page.

The idea was loosely based on a sci fi book I was reading at the time. I can’t actually remember the book, or who it was by. But the idea stuck… Though I’m pretty sure it never featured any circus mice in bottles – Thats the good thing about having artistic licence to change facts huh!

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