MA Week 70 - Professional Development, Printing and Conference paper

Reflection on the past week, 30th May 2017

I broke up from work for about 10 days on Wednesday 24^th May – this was partly to do with my working days, with bank holidays, plus a couple of days off for the “Troubling Time” conference. My intention was to focus as much as I could on my practice in all its different aspects. I started even before I broke up – on Tuesday I sketched one of the photos from the mini-derive, which was made all the easier by my sketching the subject directly the previous day (see this week 69 blogpost) and etched it into a plate prepared with hard ground. I didn’t put too much detail into it as I didn’t want to waste time if it didn’t work – I was still wondering about my technique after the soft ground issues of the last couple of weeks. I zipped into the print room to etch it on Wednesday dinnertime and it seemed to etch OK, which was a relief.

Professional Development

I was straight back into college after work on Wednesday for an event about “Exhibiting your work”, led by Bryony Bond, the Creative Director of The Tetley in Leeds. Bryony gave a 10-point plan to holding a good exhibition. It was good to have the information presented in this way, and pleasing to realise that I probably would have thought of most of it anyway eventually, after years of working in business and organising events. As always, though, there were a few really good points to think about. One was Bryony’s assertion that you shouldn’t be afraid to invite big names from the local art scene (or indeed, the art scene further afield). Curators always want to see new, interesting art. Another was to go to every opening you can, get yourself known, and make as many connections as possible. Also – put on shows yourself and make them events, with artists’ talks and the like.

Another professional development event followed on Thursday morning, “The Art of Communicating”, an event by the Cultural Institute at the University of Leeds. This was led by Kerry Harker, the founder of the Tetley, now a freelance curator. I found Kerry’s style both engaging and accessible. As with the previous evening, I’d already discovered quite a lot of what Kerry talked about in dribs and drabs, but it was good to hear it presented consistently and with a strong message. And again, as with the previous evening, there were a few really important points. A particularly good one was to own, drive and manage your own practice and not compare it to the practice of others. As Kerry pointed out, you might wish you had another’s practice, but you don’t. So take your own practice seriously and move it forward.

There were also two other speakers who had graduated fairly recently and who talked about setting up collectives and starting to make art happen in the city. They gave some tips for getting funding and an insight into difficulties they’d faced. I’d already heard of some of the work of both of them and it was interesting to hear their side of things and also that they spoke honestly.

As always, I have quite detailed handwritten notes from both these events, and blogging about them makes me realise I should go back and undertake some of the actions that I promised myself I’d do immediately.

Printing

The thankless task of stopping out

After the morning’s event, I was straight over into the Print Room to start working into my latest etching. After taking a few prints, Mike helped me to spray a mixture on it that would allow it to aquatint, and I set to work with the endless task of stopping it out and biting it, which is still in progress.

I also had another go with the soft ground conundrum. I stripped back one of the plates that hadn’t worked last week and applied another soft ground, then drew onto it through greaseproof paper. I etched it for much less time than previously and I actually got something out of it – by no means perfect, but enough to give me more to go on.

Small steps forward, or going round in circles?

The plate hadn’t bitten deeply enough to give a proper print, but it did yield a couple of clues. There was a lot of foul bite on the surface, which I took to be where I had rested the circle stencil and my ruler onto the paper on top of the plate. The ground was also starting to come off in one corner of the plate, akin to what had happened the last couple of weeks. When I looked more closely, I realised this was where I’d handled it (even though I’d been really careful). So I concluded that the ground is much more fragile than I’d realised. Again, more experimentation needed, but a step forward.

Today, along with the endless stopping out, I’ve been pulling prints of the gentrified office building to put in the “Art Market” at the end of year show towards the end of next week. The idea is to do a variable edition of 10 and put 5 into the market.

Troubling Time Paper

The other main activity has been firming up the paper for the “Troubling Time” conference in Manchester, which is slowly taking shape. I was really struggling with getting it together earlier today and I knew that I needed to go for a walk, so I took half an hour and walked mindfully. This helped free up my thoughts considerably. I’ve always found a half-hour walk from work at lunchtime really beneficial for, quite literally, clearing my thoughts. I’d never realised it was so integral to my wellbeing, despite a lot of my art practice being walking-based.

Bank holiday weekend work!

Also for the conference, I have used some of my old monoprints to make postcard-sized business cards to hand out to other participants, particularly those who will (hopefully) create the visual work with me in my session. The cards look quite good cut up and in a pile on the table!

 

MA Week 69 - Pressing on with printmaking and Frances Morris talk

Reflection on the past week, 23rd May 2017

Pressing on with printmaking and Frances Morris talk

Developing the drypoint

I’ve developed my drypoint following the circles I etched with the dividers last week. As well as the dividers, I'd bought a circle stencil which proved ideal for drawing the circular shapes both on paper and ultimately on the plate. I sketched out a series of shapes from the mini-dérive, working to relate the shapes to each other and to balance the sketch with a variety of shapes and sizes. I also experimented with textures and shading, and was quite pleased with the result. I then flip-photocopied it and drypoint etched it into Perspex.  As always I found curved shapes difficult to draw - seems the trick is to move the plate rather than the needle.  The idea of this is to form an underneath layer of a two or three layer drypoint of the walk. It gave a reasonable result but I will probably work further into it to try to get a bit more variation in depth, following on from last week’s results. I printed it in blue (process cyan) as I wanted to take one of the colours of the walk, namely that of the railings outside the former Burley Library.

 

The shapes of the overlooked urban environment

Yesterday I went out at lunchtime and did a couple of very quick sketches which might act as a “top layer” to this plate. I’d drawn outdoors previously but taken quite a bit of time over each sketch. These were done quickly, and I was amazed at the amount of visual information you can get down within 5 minutes.

 

Houses; visual note
 

More soft ground troubles.

Following on from last week's experiment, I tried again with pressing plant materials into a soft ground. Last week I used an old plate that I'd acquired and stripped back. This week I used a similar plate plus a brand new one. I sanded them both back equally and cleaned them to within an inch of their life following my hunch of last week. However... still no joy. The ground still came away. So it isn't the plate, given I’d used an old and a new one, and it can’t be the cleaning either. It must be something to do with the preparation and/or the etching. More investigations needed.

 

“Troubling Time” conference paper

I've started to write the paper for the "Troubling Time" conference in Manchester on 1st June. I am going to introduce my research and my practice, then invite the participants to produce a visual work which "troubles time". This is based on the organisers' encouragement of contributions which “engage practically with their duration, with the aim of fostering methodological diversity”. I don’t know if people will engage with it, and it’s already pushing me out of my comfort zone, but that’s probably a good thing.

On a related note, I've just heard that the walking event scheduled for 1st June has been postponed for a couple of reasons. This is a shame but it does mean that I will be able to attend the whole day at the conference which will be good.

Frances Morris talk

Finally I went to an excellent talk by Frances Morris, director of Tate Modern, last night. She is a very engaging, interesting speaker and I learnt a lot about "behind the scenes at museums" from her Talk. I've summarised the points most salient to my own practice in this blogpage.

 

 

MA Week 68 - Successful exhibit and failed experiment

Reflection on the past week, 15^th May 2017

Etching experiments

It’s now May and I need to start to focus on the final project and the hand-in, 3 months away but fast approaching. After enjoying etching so much, I’ve decided to concentrate on intaglio printing to produce my final pieces (so no surprise there, then).

I’ve finally started to work up some of the ideas after the April mini-dérive. I’ve been sketching abstracts of shapes from the walk, and I’m still playing with how they might work together. I’ve also been trialling how best to drypoint circles, as previously pondered. I’ve done a test plate which has given interesting results. I bought a pair of dividers but I think they are a bit light weight for this task. However, the rather faint mark they made gives depth to the plate as it contrasts with some of the deeper marks, so perhaps there is something to pursue there. I’ll continue to work on this.

 

Playing about with circles and acetates

A disappointment was a failure with grounding a plate. I’d applied soft ground to a previously-used copper plate, which I’d re-prepared according to what I’d learnt so far. I wanted to press it onto the grates I photographed to try to get some surface texture. I tried this but it didn’t work – I think the two surfaces were too flat, and Mick (the Print Room manager) said this was probably the case. By this stage I was already unconvinced by the ground, but tried making some further marks into it and biting it. When I came to rinse it, the ground rinsed off. As far as I can tell, it hadn’t adhered to the plate properly. I can only think I didn’t clean the plate enough before I applied the ground, but I’d spent quite a lot of time soaping and re-soaping it. Back to the drawing board with that one, but at least this setback is early on in the proceedings and I can rethink the idea.

 

Exhibition exposure

I forgot to mention a couple of weeks back that I had had a piece accepted for the “Framework” exhibition at the Old Red Bus Station bar in Leeds. The exhibition is to raise money for Leeds Women’s Aid and the organisers (coincidentally also students at Leeds College of Art) wanted pieces that would be suitable for viewing by children. As that rules out a lot of my current rather darker work, I submitted a painting of some lilies that I did a couple of years ago and was delighted to get it accepted. Even better, I met up again with Michelle before the opening last Thursday and we talked more about developing our work together. There were a few other familiar faces from the MA course too and it was a really lovely occasion.

My piece is the flowery one at the top. Honestly.

 

Academic thoughts

I also met up with Zoë again to chat more about how the walking event will work on 1^st June. As always it was an interesting and insightful discussion. It set me thinking in much more detail about how it is going to work. I think the paper I’m giving in the morning in Manchester will have some overlap with it, as I’ve been working on the basics of that, too. More thinking to do on both those topics.

 

Looking at this blogpost – I have actually done quite a lot over the past week! It didn’t feel like it at the time. That’s the value of reflective practice, I guess.

MA Week 67 - Two weeks for the price of one

Reflection on the past fortnight, 8^th May 2017

 

I’ve just realised that I’ve lost count of the weeks somewhere, and that I was going to end up having 81 weeks in an 80 week course, so I’ve combined the past two weeks. I’ve done quite a lot, too.

 

Sketching and etching

I did a final sketch of St Paul’s (see also this week 65 blogpost) which still wasn’t brilliant, but allowed me a further chance to play with perspective. I don’t know why I found it so difficult; possibly it was because I was trying to alter the perspective from the photo I was using. Next day I transposed it to one of the little copper plates and worked on this for a couple of days. It still wasn’t a brilliant drawing, but the etching worked and I got some prints out of it. I used the needle with the slanted edge (I think it’s called an echoppe) which worked well when making curved shapes. I also used a roulette wheel to give some texture to the blossoms and leaves and I was surprised by how deeply it bit. It took so deeply in relation to the etched lines that I didn’t think they had bitten. I imagine I probably dug too far in with the wheel.

One result of this was that the blossoms were obscured. I thought about drypointing them in, but Mike suggested regrounding, re-etching and re-biting the plate. This seemed like a good way to learn about multiple grounding. I used liquid hard ground again and the resulting re-work certainly gave more definition. However there was a lot of “foul bite”, with dots here and there. I then realised I’d not cleaned the plate before re-grounding, so presumably there were dots of grease that resisted the ground. Possibly not ideal, but a lesson learnt. Also the dots gave some texture, so possibly a slightly happy accident.

 

Springtime St Paul's

 

I had intended to grind this off the plate and do a completely different design, but I’d learnt so much from this little plate that I’ve kept it, for now at least.

 

On Saturday and Sunday I attended the “Etching Weekend” at the West Yorkshire Print workshop in Mirfield. It was excellent. I worked with two images; a photo of Assisi I’d taken on holiday a few years ago, which I knew would work up into different areas of tone, and an image of some tulips from my mini-dérive with Michelle.  

On the Saturday we prepared and etched a hard ground plate, for which I used the Siena image. I’d already practised a lot of this technique but I learnt a lot of hints and tips. We also prepared a soft ground plate. It was really interesting to see the nuances of different workshops. 

On Sunday we started with the soft ground plate, into which I pressed some plant materials that were just growing outside the window. I then traced the photo of some tulips into the ground. I was surprised how dark and crayony the marks bit; the soft ground is very fragile compared to the liquid hard ground I’ve been using in college.

 

Assisi aquatint

 

The next stage was aquatint, and I decided to aquatint both plates. Our technician, Kate, applied the actual rosin powder but I would like to learn how to do this. I’d worked out the tones I wanted for the Assisi print and it was a bit tedious applying the stop out varnish to achieve this, not really knowing what the outcome would be. I was very pleased with the result considering it is a first effort. It printed rather too dark but Kate showed us how to adjust the transparency of the ink to allow lighter-toned printing.

 

Sepia tint tulips

The plant material images and the heavy drawing marks of the tulips don’t necessarily belong on the same plate, but they don’t look too bad together and this serves as a really good test/ideas plate for future soft ground use. Kate helped me to print it in colour. I would have liked to have picked her brains further on that point, but time didn’t permit. All in all an excellent weekend.
 

 A moan retracted
 

I mentioned in this week 63 blogpost that I’d submitted a conference abstract and heard nothing. It transpires that an email must have got lost somewhere in the ether as it had been accepted! This caused a panic as the conference had been extended to two days and my panel clashed with the walking event with Zoë and Lynne. Fortunately the organisers were mighty accommodating and have moved my panel to the morning so I can do both events. So that’s a paper to write added into the plan then!
 

Otherwise…
 

I was away over the weekend, which was great, so other than that I’m desperately trying to catch up with my creative journal. It’s good reflecting back with the benefit of hindsight but I really wish it was a bit more up-to-date!

 

 

 

 

 

 

MA Week 66 - Painting out of my comfort zone

Reflection on the past week, 24^th April 2017

 

I had the good fortune to go away for a couple of days after Easter so I didn’t get the chance to work further on ideas from last week’s mini-dérive. I did, however, go on a one-day painting course led by Julia Borodina. The day looked at using collaged elements and large areas of bold colour in landscape painting. 

The basic premise was to use big blocks of thick colour, starting by applying with a house paint brush and moving down in brush size from there. Spattering, collaged elements that hung over the side of the paper and scratching into the paint were all positively encouraged. The idea of using these big, bold colour blocks was quite alien to me, and I wasn’t alone! However, with a lot of help from Julia I managed to produce this work.

 

It’s really too colourful for me and I would like to try this technique out again with a limited palette. That way I would be more confident about the colours and could give more attention to the technique. I also wasn’t sure about the collaged elements – I didn’t think they added a great deal, apart from perhaps the crinkled paper in the “mountains”. However, other people had used this more successfully, to provide sculptural elements to their paintings. 

One thing I did really like was the scratching to reveal colours hidden underneath. This scratching technique comes in over and over again in my work. The techniques we used were something I think I’d been aspiring too, but I hadn’t quite got there. It was a really good day packed with lots of useful ideas and I expect it will provide a good starting point for future painting projects.

MA Week 65 - Mini-dérive with Michelle

Reflection on the past week, 17^th April 2017

 

Dériving in Burley

My arty friend Michelle and I had been pondering a possible collaboration and we decided to go for a wander, a mini-dérive as it turned out. We set off from the University when I broke up for Easter on Maundy Thursday, and wandered. So even though we had a definite starting point, we weren’t sure where we’d end up. 

Grate stuff

I mentioned to Michelle, Tina Richardson’s advice to “see the familiar anew” and even though we started out on the University campus, that’s what I did. Walking with someone else, who perceived the surroundings differently to me, meant that I saw things that she picked out that I would have overlooked. A good example was the many different grates and manhole covers on campus, all with their own design. I even found a grimy corner of campus that I’d never seen before, and a bit of Woodhouse Moor I’d never walked on.  

A quiet corner of campus

 

Leaving Woodhouse Moor, we drifted down towards Cardigan Road. We chatted as we drifted, commenting on the surroundings, where might we go next, what did this used to be. I also felt much less obvious and self-conscious than when wandering alone. I enjoyed being in this old part of the city, now mainly a student area, but with lots of lovely Northernness still to enjoy. My favourite part came last; the abandoned Burley Library, painted a lovely blue that was peeling back to reveal red. So many layers and shapes.

 

Burley Library, detail

Developing some ideas

Initial ideas I jotted into my phone after the walk:

• Something with the shapes and that blue from Burley Library
• Drypoint of the wander - do a sketch first of interesting shapes, views, vignettes & combine
• Shapes from grates as a "peephole" into something else? Layer up? Acetates?

The following day, I did a sketchbook page with sketches of the most interesting shapes and scenes. I’d taken over 100 photographs (!), providing a lot of interesting source material, and the issue now is how to combine these. Then I started combining these into abstract shapes. There was a tree shape that I thought would give a centrepiece for a possible abstract. I decided it would be interesting to put this as a negative space but as I drew it it using a graphite stick and putty rubber I could see that it was turning into the map from the Mabgate abstract paintings I did for the MMU conference. Pressing on, I added a coal chute and some bricks but I wasn’t sure what to do next, so left this to try something else. The coal chute is calling to me, though. 

Ideally I would have liked to be able to photocopy the sketchbook pages onto acetate, cut them up and play around with them. It being the Easter weekend, College is closed so I decided to simply draw layers of shapes on top of one another. Again,  I expected that the tree would form a kind of natural dividing line within the page I was working up, but I’m beginning to get the sense that the tree is not really what I'm looking for. What seems to work are the geometric shapes. These are mainly circles and this presents a problem. It's difficult to etch a circle. I don’t have any dividers and a quick experiment with using a compass with an etching needle in the place of the pencil didn’t work. At the moment I don't have a solution to this but I will see if I can acquire or borrow some dividers.

 

Other sketches

I did think I’d do some painting today, but I wasn’t in a painting mood so I’ve been fighting my laptop and am now on my third blogpost of the day. I’ve also been working on a sketch of St. Paul’s Cathedral. I’m trying to improve my drawing and my understanding of perspective, through action research i.e. drawing practice. I’m quite pleased with today’s effort (St Paul's 2) although it’s not perfect. I want to turn this into a mini etch at some point.











St Paul's 1

St Paul's 2











 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MA Week 64 - Catching up and Manchester

Reflection on the past week, 10^th April 2017

 

I’ve been doing quite a bit of catching up this week restarting my long overdue creative journal. I’ve done a little bit more sketching with a view to etching. I was intending to do more on last week’s collage ideas at the weekend but decided to enjoy the sunny weather instead – it might be the only two days we get!

One thing I have managed to do is to catch up with the blogposts about the Manchester Met postgraduate conference in February. The links are here:

Week 56 – developing the sketches

Weeks 57 & 58 – painting and collaging the finalised pieces, and preparing the prints

Week 58 – attending and reflecting on the conference itself

It’s been good to reflect back on this experience now I am feeling a little better. There are still a couple of posts to catch up from the end of February and I’ll get onto these as soon as possible.

 

Saul Hay Gallery

I paid a very enjoyable visit to the Saul Hay Gallery in Manchester. This is a compact gallery tucked away by the canal and railway in Castlefield. It’s not been open long but seems to be doing well, which is good news. It’s also a really friendly place and I had a good chat with the owner, Catherine. The reason for my visit was to see some work by Mandy Payne and Josie Jenkins in the “New Topographies” exhibition. I’d not seen either Mandy’s or Josie’s work for real before so this was a good opportunity on my way to meet an old friend for lunch.
 

Interior view of the gallery

 

There was a good deal of art depicting the urban within the exhibition. I keep finding that more and more people use the urban as inspiration and this gives me the will to go on with my practice. Josie is showing works from her “Scrap” series- oil paintings of a car scrapyard. It was these pieces that originally attracted me to her work. The colours are bright and the yard is depicted on a Summer day, causing a tension between the mood and subject matter of the painting, yet at the same time rejoicing in the juxtaposition of the colours. The compositions are quite tightly cropped, almost voyeuristic, which adds to the sense of tension. Josie also has a couple of pieces made from reclaimed materials . I wasn’t aware of this aspect of her practice before and found it interesting –the pieces are physically layered and this brings complexity. They are layers of landscapes within what appear to be old wooden speaker cases.

 

The white-bordered print is Mandy's work and the paintings to the left of it are Josie's Scrap series

Mandy’s pieces included a lithograph and two pieces collaged onto small tiles of her trademark concrete. I particularly liked the almost-abstract “Stripped Bare”, a lithograph and blockprint collaged onto concrete . Her work is so meticulous and detailed. All aspects – the subject matter, the limited colour palette, the substrate – conjure up the urban. I am still hoping to see one of Mandy’s aerosol on concrete pieces for real.

Inspiration, then, and also the aspiration to one day have pieces in a gallery like Saul Hay.

It was also quite interesting to “find” this part of Manchester – Castlefield – as I am no real fan of the city. However, I really liked this area, which is evidently one of the oldest areas, near the meeting point of the Bridgewater and Rochdale canals. It made me wonder if I could wander there. How would that feel? Not being in Leeds? Am I ready for that? I’m not sure.