More this and that

 Studio time is not producing results just yet, but I must say there is plenty going on!

Having said that, it is fair to say I have finished these wee cards. Once again Kindness, Care and Hope are feeling important and I have printed two sets using different typefaces. I expect there is another set yet to be printed, but at least these two are done.

They are a lovely way of using up paper scraps, and also just lovely to have, to hold, to pop in your pocket, to stick on your fridge, to give to a friend or to set by your computer.

If you feel you might need a set of these or would like to share them with a friend - just get in touch and I shall pop some in the post to you.

I enjoyed time in the studio with a fellow printmaker last week and she was doing some beautiful work with some lovely words.

As she printed we stopped and looked at the print, and notice one small part of one letter wasn't printing as cleanly as the others.  Looking at it inked up, it was hard to see what was happening, but we decided to swap out the letter 'u' out and replace it.

Good decision.

At the top you can see the new print, and at the bottom the original, where the tiniest part of the bottom of the 'u' was not inking or printing perfectly.

And here is the culprit - with the tiniest bit of wear to that exact point. Ink was in fact pooling in it as the press inked it up; but it was too low to transfer to the paper. So many moments of problem solving with letterpress!

Whilst she set and proofed type I did a colour swatch of my new watercolour paints. Yum.

And then you just have to love a coffee shop that has tables like this!

And this beautiful fragment of moon one clear night at dusk...

Calligraphic progress

 I have been asked t0 make a book, using a portion of a poem by Rudyard Kipling.

It has been a while since I pulled out my nibs for a commission and there is always a sense of hesitancy when I return to lettering for somebody else. Can I still do it?

I started out early in the week using rubbish paper and ink; and the results were not what you would call encouraging, so today I got out some of the paper I will use for the final piece and decided to sit down and try to write something 'proper' with 'proper' ink.

Always so much better than messing about with rubbish ink and paper, and I don't know know why I didn't start there!

Working wth beautiful BFK Rives printmaking paper, I tested and trialed a series of inks. I was checking for colour and strength; but also for whether they ran.

I was working out which nib width would work (got that right first time!) and checking how long each line would be and how much height a verse would take-up.

I recorded information about each line after I had written it.

All in all I tried out 6 inks, the last one being walnut ink which I mixed from crystals, so I tested out 3 dilutions or strengths of it.

Here's the documentation to remind me. The nib I used (William Mitchell size 3 1/2), the ink I used, followed by the line length and the x-height (4mm).

I liked the strong walnut ink best, so completed the verses with that.

I knew I had made mistakes along the  way. Here I had a lapse and forgot the type of 'g' I should use, so just did the correction it straight afterwards. I also wrote birds not bird.

And here I had the word baleful in my head as I went to write bailiff, and left the second 'i' out so just stuck it in where it was supposed to go afterwards.

And just because I like this angle.

I was testing for colour and bleeding and your can see how a couple of the inks really did bleed on the paper and that the walnut ink held a crisper line.

And so afterwards, I measured the longest line in each of the three verses, worked out how high each verse was (approximately) and then tried to place them on the page where I think they will look best.

If only I was technologically competent, but I do love and trust the old 'cut and paste and move around by hand' method.

It felt like I had really progressed and could begin to see how it might look, and the spaces and places left within the book for illustrative works.

As I worked through the writing I oftentimes wondered how other calligraphers do it. Do they, like me, have the words to be written by the side of the piece they are working on, and glance over to the original, say the words quietly in their heads, repeat the words as they put pen to paper? I slow the words right down to match the pace of my writing. I oftentimes only choose three - five words to focus on at a time, so I am constantly going back and for the between the source and the work.

And I wonder where the mistakes come from - bird v birds? bailiff v baleful? I must have just drifted away in my mind between the glance to the left and the glance to the paper in front of me.

And just because we are getting some lovely, fleeting early morning winter light here are some orchids from the studio garden which I brought home. Their elegance and serenity is such wonderful companionship in the kitchen.

Thursday Thoughts...

“I have made many mistakes in my life, and I am, in retrospect, quite grateful for all of them” 

 Augusten Burroughs

Absolutes are never really my thing, and I read through this one and thought - wow, he seems very confident about this! And on investigating him, it is clear I missed the cultural moments when he was a  runaway best seller.

Nevertheless, the ideas contained within this quote made me stop and reflect, look back, and think about mistakes I have made. 

There are enough to consider. There are the big ones where you know you behaved badly and which leave you feeling icky many years further along. There are moments when you stuffed up and yet things worked out OK! There are moments that felt like the end of the world at the time and yet with time and distance you can see their value and indeed be grateful.

One of the challenges in this for me is that he says he is grateful for all of them. As I look back, I get the feeling I am grateful that I made a number of them, but by no means all of them. How can one be grateful if a mistake you made caused others significant harm? If the mistake you made meant you missed a great opportunity about which you remain wistful? If the mistake you made created economic uncertainty that limited your life choices?

Perhaps his modifier of quite grateful covers some of those.  My sense is that if the mistake had really negative impacts it is OK not to be grateful for it. You can acknowledge it, somehow find acceptance of the path that followed it, but I am a bit wary of gratitude for bad things.

I am grateful for many, but not all of my mistakes.

Studio Goings On

 As mentioned on Sunday, there is such thing as a finished product in the studio the moment, just plenty of exploring, wondering, trying out and  building thought upon thought.  One never knows if any of this will get me anywhere, but it's just the way I do things it seems. 

First up tho, I had a visit from a fellow artist who wants to test out  a few ideas on the presses. He brought with him some simply beautiful brass stencils with a history unknown to us both.  I fell in love on the spot.

He ever so kindly gifted me a couple.

I loved the remnant handwriting on this one; and the lines marked on each stencil to guide the height of the numbers and symbols.

And I also love that the hand-cut nature of them...

I am working in a few different directions and trying to progress my thinking on all of them. I headed back to the eggshells, trying to work out what I wanted to say with them and how I might say it. Funny how a weird idea takes hold and you can't leave it alone. A bit like an itch that just needs to be scratched. To what end I wonder? 

This looks like two badly poached eggs I reckon! What this taught me was that trying to spray paint eggs that have been bought from a shop and have a stencil mark on them, does not work.

It also taught me that trying to cover an egg in a single spray also does not work - too much drip.

At Barry's suggestion, I sprayed them a few times in a light spray pattern. MUCH better. This is after having tried several other options - all sorts of white ink; and white acrylic paint in various strengths.  I almost went to try white nail polish when I sparkily remembered spray cans!

And thinking about how they might sit, should they rest open a wee ring? 

Or should they lie loosely and sort of tumble?

Sometimes work appears almost fully formed and I just do a few bits of this and that along the way. At other times I push, encourage, barter and try to weedle it out into the world...

Home and Away

 Barry and I flew to Melbourne last week to attend our favourite Communities in Control Conference. It was a  very busy few days as we had our little pop up letterpress poster and card shop to set up and person. And some fabulous and invigorating and inspiring speakers to listen to and absorb, and then set forth once more with hope.

Some shots from the city...

The dazzling lines of tall city buildings, not seen here in Maleny nor in the Scottish Highlands.

A cute welcome note.

Not open for dinner.

Gingko leaves lit at night.

Hopscotch artwork on the wall of Our Community House.

The sun has shone the past few days and spirits have been lifted.  We wandered the garden a bit and pulled many a weed, and some fragments from there, appear here.

And a lovely couple days at the studio fiddling still, pushing a few different projects forward at a time, nothing much to show for lots of testing and trialling, but one part of Autumn/Winter I love is how the sun (when it shines) makes lovely dancing shadows on the concrete floor.

We have been back in the country for three weeks and have done a heap of things and been a few places. Yesterday I washed, and baked and ironed and we ate soup and watched a movie and it felt like we were finally settling back into our rhythm of our home here.

Thursday Thoughts...

It’s a sad day when you find out that it’s not accident or time or fortune, but just yourself that kept things from you.” 

Lillian Hellman 

I think I have mentioned before that I often find a quote that clicks, but I know nought of the author. So it was with this one, and after  a quick peruse I think its fair to say that Ms Hellman was a colourful and interesting character, and who indeed knows where truth lies?

All that aside, this one connected with me today, when I am at the point of the Thursday Thoughts cycle where I am pondering art.

I spend a fair bit of time in my head wondering why I don't have more art in my days and my life? Why do I find it so hard to just go make? Why do I feel this massive obligation to do all the chores first? Why does going to the studio feel like a reward for doing the other things instead of my purpose?

I still don't have the answers, and I still don't have the strategies to move me there and I think that's why I responded to this one. It is indeed a sad day when you realise that the main reason you don't have this making life in the way you crave it, is you.

Or me.

It's probably me and a whole bundle of 'shoulds' that I seem to carry around with me, that stop me committing fully.  An interesting thought to ponder.

My egg stones from Scotland. Times like these, the studio really calls...

Scottish inspiration

As I examine and investigate the things I tried to do in Scotland, the places we went, the things we saw; I have loved so many of them.

I did those rubbings of the cottage walls on a variety of papers and they made it back here safely. I flattened them for a few days, then sprayed a workable fixative onto them to stop the graphite simply transferring onto anything and everything. 

So lovely just resting on the table!

I think they offer so much. 

And then there is this thread I bought in Wick, at The Printers Rest cafe, where Karen also knits and sells fibres.

These colours sing to me of Scotland, and I am excited to think about what they might get involved in.

This lichen on a standing stone at Clava Cairns near Inverness, looks like an ancient map to me, and the colours like the threads a bit. 

And the stones that have me enamoured were the source of inspiration for this graphic layering image as well. 

Our time at the cottage may be a time of small making, but it is a time of large enthusing and inspiring!

A hotch potch

 The weeks are full and moments of slow creativity hard to find; but there are always things happening.

I taught on Tuesday and had fun with two friends as they letterpress printed onto their own artwork. Too busy to take photos, but the results were heading places!

We have been hosting the live streaming of the Sydney Writers Festival here in Maleny the past few days and have had several great sessions. It is so good that they stream to community venues and enable rural folk to participate in city events.

Otherwise my moments have seen me doing plenty of odd little things...

Opening a box of art supplies to find these gem like watercolours.

Visiting a friend I found this wonderful piece of rusty wire and began imaging all sorts of things.

I started looking through old workbooks and came across this lovely fold that I had completely forgotten about.  Beginning to ponder how I might use it...

I'm looking to re-purpose a book where the pages had been damaged. Slow, but weirdly satisfying. Like going back in order to go forward again.

And then there's the weather still...

We did have a clear afternoon one day, and this lovely sky appeared.

But  heading to exercises in the morning is certainly dark and requiring real commitment!

So definitely a real hotch potch of things in my life at the moment!