Studio Saturday - mornings in the studio

It's so enjoyable to sit in the studio every morning - with my back to the mess that must be tackled someday. The table by the window is mostly clear - but this week there were lots of shavings from the "Anni" woodblock

 Kinda like a great cloud tumbling over a tiny landscape...

One bit of fooling around involved cutting holes from magazines - I wanted circles that were part dark, part light -

 Nice big punch -

 Strange things appear through the holes -

 and the cut pages can be arranged "interestingly" -

 as can the circles

Not sure where this is going! Waiting to see where it might lead...

This is a collection of bits of blue tape removed from my cutting mat -

 and a rubbing taken. Again, just play.

The worktop was clear enough, thanks to a burst of clearing up and throwing out, for laying out some inky drawings that surfaced -

 "channeling Munakata and Carli Accardi". And using "chinese money".

Sometimes I spend rather too long looking at instagram, and sometimes an image calls out to me -

After awkwardly starting drawing in the little notebook, I found that if I "liked" doing it, it flowed. Looking harder made it look better. I'm quite pleased with the results -

This morning in the home studio

Actually these headless dolls have been sitting around for a few days - they are stuffed but the openings (at the back) not sewn up. I took them off the pinboard when they got in the way, and oh my, the dust.... But after a gentle hoovering they look as good as new.

 The challenge was to use lots of little bits of microwave-dyed fabric - thank you Ann Dingsdale for showing me how to do this, so many years ago! What we did was start with big pieces and then tear them in half to overdye. At the end of the day we split each piece of fabric and thus each had half of the final output, some with several layers of colour.

My sort-of-people are based on Korean costume (hanbok), with those long, banded sleeves.

Their headless state bothered me rather, and suddenly I realised that the traditional wrapped collar, exaggerated to great heights, would look like a head

All together in a happy dance - or defensive movement - hmm not sure...

 ... make of it what you will....

 Seen from above -

 Drawn from the photo -

Fleeing!

Midsummer morning

A clear dawning on the longest day -

 On the way downstairs to take a pic of the sun-flooded studio

 the camera took one of those unwarranted pix -

 I got back to a fun little project started a few days ago -

 ...cutting up a magazine for "puzzle collage" ...

At first I was after solid colour but after a while bits of letters crept in, and that was much more interesting. It's interesting how, once you start something boring, it can evolve into something you never even thought of.

Today's arrangements -

Just laying them out was quicker than gluing them down. This first one was glued down as each piece came to hand, no chance to rearrange it -

 After that I laid them down carefully and did the cropping with the camera -

I'm thinking ahead to woodblocks that are just that, blocks - inkable in various colours.

Over breakfast I paged through last week's Weekend magazine and was delighted to see an "interior" that resembled my own -

 A heap of papers! Things left on little tables! Layers on the walls!

The article contrasts his childhood and his "reconstituted", un-messy living space and cleaning habits -

It's true, there are better things to do than obsessive tidying. What's your level of comfort?

While I think about that, I'm going to tear out that page and put it up on the wall.

Mark making - two afternoons at Morley

"Mark making for ceramics" was the title of the course. Tutor Jo asked us to follow her instructions about using the materials and the book of papers that she'd supplied. I'm always glad when the world of infinite possibilities gets limited somehow, whether by materials or subject matter or instructions.

First we used hard and soft pencils, and graphite and eraser, to draw lines across the pages. Simple and satisfying, right up my (travel-lines) street, in fact.

Noticing the feel, and the look, and what happens at the edge of the page...

White wax crayon and scratching and ink - been there, done that, but every time is different depending on what's gone before and what the purpose of doing it might be...

Scratching harder through wax into card - now we're getting somewhere...

 Landscapes emerge ...

 ...and all sorts of things happen when a tiny dot of ink is added to a big drop of water -

 Monoprinting - again, the type of mark that comes from different pencils -

 and from other items, surfaces and sticks for instance -

 or even by rolling a hexagonal pencil! -

Jo had also prepared some plaster blocks for carving into; these could be developed as stamps for clay -

 Using windows to find interesting areas - these are about 5cm square -

The eraser-carving is based on favourite marks -

The trees aren't abstract or simple but I have this thing about the way tree branches spread out, or not, and have never explored that idea.

The erasers turned out to be great for printing in grids.

In the second session I glued down some squares cut from the marks made last week, and we made 3d cylinders which gave an entirely different perspective to the marks/lines -

 Then we used a variety of scraps and put them between layers of acetate into slide holders. These are tiny pieces and it was a bit fiddly ...

 ... but when projected on the wall, what great effects!

cellophane and string

colour overlap

thin folded strips

scratching on the acetate