Sketches and Arctic Antics

First things first, here are the obligatory train sketches from my trip to Cambridge this week. Both done on the homeward journey - no opportunity to draw on the way there.

I had a great time as usual and finally got my hands on that lovely printroom. I knew there was something very different from Brighton Independent Printmakers (other than the hugeness and hospital-neatness) and as we had our induction I realised what it was...no smell! They use hardly any toxic chemicals and no naked flames (so no smoking of the hard ground or blowtorching aquatints...two of my favourite bits!). It's so strange to be in an odourless printroom! Good-strange, I suppose, although I'm actually fond of the smell of BIP (despite the raw lungs...). They use aluminium with copper sulphate, and zinc and steel with Edinburgh Etch. The processes are very similar to those I have done before so I am really looking forward to taking advantage of the open access facility.

I came home to a letter from hell giving me news I really didn't want. (Boring money stuff as usual). The panic it has induced has given me a burst of energy (not to mention a blinding headache and going off food and sleep) and today I totally cleaned, sorted and rearranged my studio. I have got a mangle which I've had adapted to make a small press, and I wanted to make room for it and varnish the wood bits. I worked really hard all day in the arctic temperature* of the studio and feel frustrated that I won't be able to work in there for ages as I'm doing extra days in the shop next week.

Tonight, sketching for my project. I will work through the pain of the headache and the panic of the letter!

* (I wore - knickers, bra, tights, legwarmers, bedsocks, trainers, jeans, vest, pyjama top, hoody, scarf, painting overall, bodywarmer, hat and gloves).

Etching

So I'd asked for the next available week off work (I usually work Fridays and Saturdays), so I could spend two whole days drawing and maybe catch up a bit. My boss said this week would be OK. It just didn't work out though...a whole lot of Friday 13th style problems plus the torrential rain meant that I just went to BIP and did this etching , and then went home exhausted after no sleep the previous night. Better luck tomorrow I hope.

Anyway it's hard and soft ground on steel with some aquatint. Next week I'm having an induction to etching at uni which will be great (and save me a fortune too) - they use ferric chloride though which I don't have any experience of - BIP uses nitric acid.

Under a Burnished Moon

I had two failures at printing today - I ruined a plate I've been working on for ages, and also I had taken a piece of zinc home to try drypoint on (for those who don't know, drypoint is where you scratch directly onto the metal instead of through a ground followed by biting the lines with acid). The drypoint really hurt my hands (I have trouble with my joints anyway) and then when I came to print it today, the pressure was too light and it didn't come out very well. You don't get many prints off a drypoint anyway because the burr wears away (and it's the burr that gives a lovely soft line). So I gave up on it. The print above was almost a failure too - originally I'd done the moon using chine colle, but the blue ink made it a horrible muddy colour - I was about to go home but then decided to try burnishing it instead, and I think it worked out OK.

Luckily I have much more patience with creative things than I used to when I was little. In fact I have loads more patience with creative things than with absolutely any other aspect of life. Put a slow-moving queue in front of me and I am foaming at the mouth within seconds!

No Willpower

It's been a stressful, busy and tiring few weeks, with family problems, a new job and the Open House all jostling for time and attention. I woke up this morning feeling really drained and achey!

Today is my usual printing day, and my first thought was to give it a miss this week and try and chill out a bit instead. But then I thought, "Well, it won't hurt to just pop in and collect my work." Then I thought, "It would be silly to just go and collect my work without taking a few prints off of my new plate." Then I thought, "If I don't prepare a new plate I'll have nothing to work on next time."

So I ended up staying about 3 hours, printing this and adding chine colle, and buying three new pieces of steel...


...my name is Liza and I'm an etchoholic.

Disasters narrowly missed and retching on the bus

Well I start my new job today so wish me luck! I have to admit I haven't got off to the greatest of starts - as I was on the bus to Brighton yesterday for a merry printing session, I got a phone call asking where I was - I was supposed to start yesterday! I felt sick with awfulness (in fact, I actually retched). But checking back, I found that they had typed the wrong date on my letter. I hadn't noticed the day at all.

After changing buses, I discovered that everyone in the local area had seemingly decided not to wash for 3 weeks and then join me for the rest of my journey. Pleasant. Retching on the bus twice in a day - that must be a first.

The lovely, odour-free people at BIP cheered me up as usual. Remember my Manatee print? My first ever etching? Well I thought I'd add aquatint to it last week and I thought it was a disaster - the plate went rusty within seconds of coming out of the acid. But I cleaned it off with Brasso and it turned out really well...
In fact I'd like to make a story around these two.

Anyway I should be dressing in my smart yet casual clothes. Bye!

I ruined the plate of the sketch I did yesterday. But here's another one - it's hard ground, then soft ground and aquatint on steel.

Drowned my sorrows (well, had two glasses of wine!) with my good friend Sandie yesterday evening. Then cried and went to bed with Slumdog Millionaire. (The book, unfortunately, not a real one, or I wouldn't be in this situation in the first place!)

More Printing...and Nostalgia

Sorry for the long absence - I seem to have been so busy lately, yet not accomplishing very much! Anyway, here is my Red Riding Hood plate with a second colour plate printed on top. I didn't manage to register it very well but it was a good exercise to learn how to do it. You have to make two plates exactly the same size, do a proof of the black one and from that proof, offset a printed image onto the second plate, from which you stop out all the stuff you don't want to be in colour.

Anyway just off to scrub a bathroom now...what joy. Oh and I am listening to Lastfm at the moment - a recent discovery. You put in a band or genre you like and it creates a little radio station for you. This morning I have been listening to "Blondie" radio...oh my goodness it gave me gems from the past I'd forgotten all about! For instance, now it's playing "Psycho Killer" by Talking Heads - I haven't heard that track for years! And "Happy House" by Siouxsie and the Banshees! And hearing the B52s "Rock Lobster" made me feel so nostalgic I felt physically sick. Sigh...where have the years gone?! I want to wear all black again and be cool and rebellious! (Instead of wearing black to hide bulges and stains).

Have a great day everyone! (Ooh - it's playing 11.59 now!)

(Later: It's playing "Another Nail For My Heart" by Squeeze...I feel "past"sick again and I have to turn it off...)

Prints and stress

I've somehow gone down with shingles around my right eye, two days before The Interview. I feel really low, not to mention thoroughly pissed off. Thank goodness for my printing class, where I did these...



The tree is etching and aquatint on zinc, with chine colle. The red riding hood at the bottom is just a proof - next week I am going to make a colour plate for the girl's coat so that it prints red. So far on this plate, it is etching and aquatint. On steel. It's still damp, so sorry about the wibblywobbliness of the paper.


I have recklessly signed up for another 6 weeks of printing. I'd leave too much unfinished business if I just stopped now. I can't afford it, but I am telling myself it's an investment....

Illustration Friday - Climbing

Come up and see my etchings? Well, etching, to be precise- my very first one ever! I thought it fitted into the IF theme too as she is climbing aboard a cuddly Manatee.

This is just etching onto steel, which gives a mid tone to everything. This week I started a very simple tree design on zinc, which is whiter, and I am aquatinting it in a couple of tones and then want to do chine colle on it.

The design of this etching sums up how I feel about printing. I love it, but it's just too massive a subject to grasp! It's just fab. Even though my hand are sore and my lungs are raw, it's worth it.

Bad Mood, Bunting and Bank

Hi everyone! My day got off to a bad start ( a child-related problem) which made me so wound up I left my house at top speed, abandoning the washing up, and went to my studio. It was very quiet as it was so early - just tea and Radio 4 for company. It was too cold to draw much, but I did make this bunting to decorate the studio.


My lovely friends always give me fabrics, and this will remind me of them. I made more since I took this pic and will probably put it all round the room. While sewing, I did a lot of thinking and planning, and it cheered me up a bit - until I went to the bank to withdraw some money and they wouldn't hand it over until I had agreed to an appointment with them because I am always so overdrawn. Grr! How dare they intrude on my "head-in-the-sand" system of managing my finances! They set my overdraft limit, without me even asking, then have a go at me when I use it.

I know their cunning plan...they're going to try and persuade me to get a loan. But I won't I tell you, I won't! (Unlike Brad, who recently went in the bank for a cheque book cover and left signed up to Advantage Gold, with a loan, a savings account and a credit card.)

So the day has come full circle, with me starting and ending it totally fed up.

Oh - I almost forgot - on Tuesday I started a 6-week course in etching at BIP (Brighton Independent Printmaking). I thoroughly enjoyed it - but probably for the wrong reasons! You know when you do a course and everyone introduces themselves and says how much of the subject they've done? Well everyone seemed to be saying things like, "Yes, I've studied etching for 75 years," and "I am head of etching at St Martin's,"...but luckily there were a couple of beginners like me, and it ended up being a real laugh. The studio looks like a torture chamber with lots of strange, Medieval looking equipment. The tutor, lovely though she was, could have been talking Swahili for the amount I understood and took in. But together we blundered our way through the first stages and were soon in the cupboard smoking our hard ground like a bunch of streetwise etchers. My plate is here, carefully wrapped in newsprint and I have to actually scratch something into it before next session...I can't bring myself to yet, in case I ruin it!