Printing Fun - Drypoint

I enjoy working with texturing tools with clay and have found pleasing similarities with basic printworking. DRYPOINT  also brings back fond memories of some of my first pieces of artwork created with "British Scraperboard".
With any new genre it goes a lot easier if you know some of the "tricks of the trade".
Using water based printing ink, I had initial problems with fast drying. even with damp paper . Inking up a perspex plate was very tricky and yielded only partial results - frustrating in a group situation!

The answer was just one drop of washing up liquid in the small amount of ink used - plus a rounded nuffing pad to take off excess ink in circular motions - so as not to lift out ink from incised lines,

Damp paper dabbed off to an even finish was ideal for lifting a print. I love the individual character of these prints - with each inking up there are more possibilities.

LINO

Having been inspired by printmaking from several sources -namely Maxine Prescott, and my dear friend Jonathan Howlett (not to mention the works of John Buckland-Wright),

this is my first attempt at a linocut (modern synthetic) printed by hand with water-based inks.. I'm pleased with the result and with the experience in which I have learned how to approach the next.

The theme is my beloved Chanctonbury Ring (again).

Nuclear Fusion - If Only

Ingredients from the art cupboard that have sat there since a good friend and mentor said "Beware the metallic" - now, just the right thing.

These show the "not being beaten" spirit again as they started as acrylic "monoprints" and ended up with "extreme" hand finishing.

For the Love of Space

I collect images in my mind. I LOVE satellite imagery of our planet's surface.

The Ural Mountains from several miles up. MAJESTIC!

(or is it the glaze in the bowl of a ceramic lanscape form?)

The Sound of a Coin Tumbling Towards the Void.

At some point in life you have to recognise what makes sense. For some time I've been aware of tributaries of water flowing through broken landscape, searching eachother out to join and make sense collectively. Recurring images, light, landscape, water - the elements of Earth.

Looking at the back catalogue of work as pebbles strewn on a beach - elements are starting to accrete like the influences of gravity over time.

Exploring Printmaking

Sometimes the simplest of concepts, (in this case monoprinting from a "painted" plate), can be affected by the smallest of technical hitches.

Ink consistency! --- now my tube inks are better mixed the higher viscosity is proving much more manageable and control of the creative process is now possible!
Over two evenings I have been absorbed with first of all "generic" Dartmoor landscapes, and subsequently working from site specific reference.

The resulting images are more "impressionist"? and atmospheric than my painted works, but are most definitely connected to the way I approach ceramics where I am searching for simplicity of imagery in a loose style. 

Mixed media landscapes - "Taw Valley"
Acrylics and oil pastels.

I spent my college years at Exeter and used to go out to Dartmoor and absorb the atmosphere. I developed oil pastels as a supporting drawing medium for my ceramic works, using my clay tools to work them.


Oil pastels are an underrated medium which I find best used with layering, blending and scraffito techniques.