Artists Blog

The sun is just setting on Queen’s Birthday long weekend, and it was full of wonderful things.

The Calligrapher’s Guild of Western Australia held a workshop dedicated to learning a beautiful hybrid writing “hand” – a blend of Celtic and Italic.

The Guild President Gaye was our esteeemed tutor, and patiently explained time and time again “to look at the internal white spaces, not the black lines”.

Symmetry in our “arches” was what we were striving for, but it’s a whole lot harder than you may think! The abundance of information was absorbed all the easier with the imbibing of delicious baked goods and soothing teas.

There were beautiful calligraphic implements being used, like this glass calligraphy pen,

and this Italian “weighted” pen with a heavy decorated brass ferrule – how could your writing be anything but wonderful using this! Here Guild member Trish is getting used to the feel of luxury writing.

And to prove a point, the owner of the beautiful Italian pen (Gaye our President), brought in some stunning commissions she has been working on to inspire us on to great calligraphic heights. Here is a tiny snippet of her work:

The Guild has decided to embark on a print project for the end of the year. Members have each chosen an alphabet letter (some of us in a moment of madness chose 2!) which we will excute in a calligraphic/drawn/painted/mixed media/anything goes way for the end of November. These then will be put together to form a complete alphabet which will be printed as a poster for our last magazine for the year.

If anyone wishes to joing the Guild (and you can be an overseas member), fell free to contact me and join in the calligraphic fun. Still some good letters left, but get in quick!

I recently completed my final assignment in Photoshop. Manipulating pixels can be fun, frustrating and damn hard work! Here’s a small sample from that final folio.

Back in first semester I composed a still life for photography. Using this image I played with lots of brushes to give it the look of  a still life painting.

Also back in Semester One (Gawd but that seems like years ago), I did a lino cut of a barra. Having no press, it turned out dismally. (see  original post & linocut here)

Using the brain draining wizardy of Photoshop I tiled the original linocut to produce a print like piece, still showing the tile edges as a real print would.

A composite image that gave me a HUGE headache for days was this image:

You do not know how glad I am that Uni is over……

Last week (seems like an age ago), I mentioned that I was going to visit a working Artist’s Studio with a view to joining them in their space. A vacancy had arisen within their building, and the invitation to work amongst them seemed serendipitious. Four well known established and emerging artists that share a great industrial building in the heart of town. They are there each day, some starting at 5.30 am, some not finishing their work till the sun rises. They all treat it not only as a “job”, but as a passion.

Some are screen printers, on paper, fabric and plastics.

Some work with sculptural forms and installations.

Some are painters, and a studio floor is meant to have paint all over it.

The Studio was large, airy and well set up, with drying racks, an air conditioned storage room, even a lounge area where they stop for lunch each day and discuss their works progress. I spoke at length with each of them and couldn’t help but be inspired and motivated. They all agree that they urge and “feed” off each other’s enthusiasm, which has other benefits as well. When gallery curators come to see a particular artist, the others are seen as well. As a result, some are hung in galleries all over the country, including the National.

Unfortunately I could not justify joining them at this time. I explained that I would LOVE to work amongst them, but being at Uni full time doesn’t allow much devotion to a studio. However, I did mention the vacancy to an emerging artist I know, and he seems really keen to take it on.

**Sigh**,  maybe next year…

Linocut prints done in high school are responsible for a lot of impressive hand scars I reckon. So apprehension and the fear of unstoppable bleeding filled my head when I started cutting a new one recently.

The fact that the tools could be used in surgery (yes they are that sharp), had me slicing away from me and my fingers. This block was more like masonite, but is specifically for linocut prints. As it is not flexible, curves and corners were more difficult, but not impossible. I quickly gave up the idea of cutting a bazillion scales on to the barrmundi.

Next step was the inking up. Print ink is a thicker consistency than paint, and tends not to drip. You need to apply it with a special rubber roller that makes that sucking noise as it rolls over the sticky ink. The raised bits that you haven’t cut away will be the areas to hold ink. We didn’t have a big heavy press to roll the paper over the printing plate (the linocut), so results were always going to be sketchy.

I had drawn and quartered my barra, so that I could get a repeating pattern happening, rather than just one stand alone image. I was hoping that if it worked out well, I could print up some fabric for use in the backyard. An interesting aside here is that last month the largest barra was caught in Deep Creek behind our house. Even made the news in the Brisbane newspaper.

Alas, not enough pressure to make a decent print.  Where’s a huge cast iron printing press when you need one!

I had a little Indian woodblock fishstamp, which I used to fill in some gaps.

I used lots of colour combos, but all turned out pretty ordinary. I eneded up liking the printing block more than the print!

To finish on a warm and fuzzy note, there was young feathery love on  my fence…