Category Archives: drawing

Inspiring days out

I am extremely lucky to work in the creative industries and have had a couple of days feeding my own creativity. On Tuesday I went with a small group of volunteers from Whitby Museum to visit White Rose Candle Workshop, Wensley, near Leyburn. I love tools, processes and techniques and other peoples workshops so this was a real treat. Mick and Jen made us very welcome and it was great to hear Mick talk about the science of candles and how he works to make sure the candles they produce don’t smoke excessively or dribble wax.

20120222-212639.jpg
He has devised an ingenious device to help with the dipping process and his warning notice made me smile

20120222-212743.jpg

Today I attended a class with printmaker Dawn Brooks in Scarborough. I am taking a short 8 week course with her experimenting with a variety of print making techniques. I have never really done any print making before. Today we were introduced to this amazing press at Crescent Arts in Scarborough and were able to print from the Lino cuts we made last week.

20120222-213113.jpg I think Dawn said that this is a Columbian press?

I have left my prints in the drying rack but here is a photo of the final attempt

20120222-213243.jpg I prefer one of the earlier versions but couldn’t photograph them as they were a layer below on the drying rack.

20120222-213347.jpg I work quite slowly but here you can see that the group managed to produce quite a large volume of work in the two hour session. Next week we are doing transfer printing. It is exciting trying out these different techniques and I can already see ways of using Lino printing with my enamels – always good to try something new, get out of my comfort zone (even get a bit messy)!

Pins and fasteners

I have been looking at some work I made a few years ago, this kind of a review is useful and at this time of year and I like to plan new projects for the Spring.

20120112-220012.jpg

This is a brooch I made about 6 years ago, exploring the use of line by making a long narrow strip of silver, texturing and forming it. One of the aims was to make sure that the ends of the brooch pin were contained, not sticking out past the surface so nice and safe to wear. I will be teaching traditional silver jewellery making this year, please get in contact if this is something you are interested in learning.

Here are some of the exciting classes for 2012 including

2nd March 2012 Rings in metal clay
3rd March 2012 Introduction to art clay silver
10th March 2012 Introduction to enamel on art clay silver
30th March 2012 Hollow forms in art clay silver

17th, 18th, 31st March and 1st April 2012 Art Clay Certification Level 1

28th April 2012 Introduction to Art clay silver
30th April 2012 Hollow forms in art clay silver
5th, 6th, 9th, 10th May – one day workshops in enamelling

12th May 2012 – Keepsake pendant in silver clay at the Castle Museum, York
(booking through Castle Museum, York)
18th May to 21st May 2012 Art Clay Certification Level 1

13th June 2012 Special studio open day
14th, 15th July 2012 Two day class using art clay silver over glass beads
28th, 29th July 2012 Two day class art clay silver and plique a jour enamel
8th September 2012 Introduction to art clay silver
20th and 21st October 2012 Cloisonné enamelling and metal clay

Dates book up quite quickly so please get in contact if you are wanting a place.
For more information, booking, prices and terms please go to metal-clay.co

Tiny birds

Here is a better photograph of the tiny cloisonné pendant I made yesterday, daylight helps!

20111106-093534.jpg

Sketching

Drawing and sketching has to be an integral part of any design practice. I recently realised that I was spending much less time drawing and sketching than I used to and began to feel that this was having an impact upon the development of my work. I am one of those people who needs to keep learning and developing so have set myself the challenge of drawing at least three times a week. This is not with the intention of creating great drawings but just of honing my skills and developing a sense of ‘fitness’ in my technique. Like any kind of exercise, if you do it regularly then it becomes easier and I am enjoying the process.

Sketching plants, leaves or flowers does mean that I am looking at them more carefully. At some point I think I will want to dissect pieces to gain a better understanding of their forms. At the moment am enjoying exploring the basic shapes, but am reaching the point where I want to find ways of showing the colour.

20111102-190323.jpg

At this point in the year I like to set aside a bit of time for development work, it will be interesting to see where this takes me.

Enamel painting

I am trying to take my drawing a stage further by beginning to learn enamel painting. This technique uses very finely ground underglaze colours and a painting medium. The drawing is built up by painting onto a smooth White enamel surface in thin layers, firing each layer in turn. The final layer is a thin coat of flux or transparent enamel to give the surface an even gloss.

20111012-142843.jpg

20111012-142900.jpg

Text in enamel

I have become fascinated with the medium of botanical illustration and it’s conventions. I am experimenting with ideas for combining detailed drawings of plants with snatches of text. Here is an earlier panel with a sample of text applied using a riso screen printing technique. This bit of text is actually from a ship’s log, but in future work I am intending to include writing about plants and their uses. It will be an interesting project and I am looking forward to producing some larger scale pieces again.

20111012-143909.jpg

More enamel panels

My work has been returned from the exhibition at Ravenstein in the Netherlands. I had three panels, each 250mm square, included in an exhibition of work by members of the Guild of Enamellers. These are part of a series of pieces of my larger scale work and based on textures and patterns of the landscape in the Esk Valley where I live and work. They are enamel on steel, a medium I intend to explore further in my next series of pieces.

20111012-143337.jpg

Back to the drawing board

Plants, the garden and the landscape have always inspired my work and, once the autumn draws in I usually set aside time for personal development. I have decided that among other aims I want to improve my drawing skills, so am trying to get back into the habit of drawing or sketching for a short time each day.

20111012-084545.jpg
Here are my first couple of sketches.

20111012-084633.jpg
It is very satisfying to be able to focus fully in this way. It is so long since I have done anything like this that I had quite a search to find my pencils, although I have plenty of sketchbooks of different types and sizes lying around the studio!